Trolley Park Murders
by Reichenbach
Summary: An outting at an early 20th century amusement park turns deadly. 10th Doctor, postdoomsday fixerupper. Fourth in the Doors series.
1. Chapter 1

Standard disclaimers do apply. Mostly this is to keep me entertained and out of trouble whilst the big ole' gashes on my personage heal. YAY! GASHES! Anyways. Thanks to Krypto, who IS a super dog, for the beta. Thanks too Erica for the whole talking things out thing, and the handwriting idea. Go see Snakes on a Plane. It's awesome. Brief author's note explaining the location at the end.

XYZ

Trolley Park Murders

Chapter 1

XYZ

Changing out bits of wire from the very bottom of the TARDIS control column, the Doctor tapped his foot against the floor to a tune that even he couldn't hear. He'd start whistling in a moment, if his attention weren't fully locked on the two inch bits of gold wiring that he needed to swap out. It was usually an annoyingly difficult task—the hatch was awkwardly shaped, the wires were thin as dental floss, and it required sticking his whole head under the base of the column, which was a kind-of warm place to be.

Today he didn't mind, however. He'd even replaced them willingly, instead of just waiting for them to fail and patching them on the fly, as usual. His last job with a wad of chewing gum acting as solder, connecting two foil-lined wrappers had been rather ingenious, and were still holding… but he'd found the wires in storage, and it had seemed like a moderately good way to spend an afternoon.

Violet was gloriously occupied, which was thanks to another bit of genius on his part. She was stacked hip-deep in his old school texts, and had been working steadily through them for a week.

He hated having too much time to himself. He'd end up brooding, or doing something stupid. Traveling companions helped with that. However, he'd never had a companion quite as… needy as Violet. Usually they had their own pursuits to engage in during the sometimes very lengthy trips hither and thither. The widow Dougherty liked to read, buried away in the library for days and days which was mutually beneficial to them. Rose would hang around the control room, but she'd usually be reading a drug store novel, and seemed fine with their silence. But Violet…There were the physical needs, mostly focusing on food, but then she'd go wanting things like attention and positive reinforcement.

But this little masterstroke of his… it kept her busy six to seven hours a day. And Universe-willing, she was actually learning something useful.

"The TARDIS is broken!"

The Doctor instantly bashed his head off of the access panel with Violet's spontaneous declaration. Ducking his head out of the panel, he saw her staring down at him, a paper clutched in her hand. "She's usually in a state of disrepair, but trust me—she's not broken." That whole part where they fell out of space and time was usually the big tip off.

The paper trembled in her hand. "It's not translating this."

The Doctor got up, wiping his hands together, taking it from her. "It's written in English." Handing it back, he began looking at the mess at his feet, knowing that he probably wasn't going to get anything finished any time soon, if this interruption was to be a gauge.

Especially with the way she was turning the paper round in circles, trying to make sense of it. "Well, then she's turning it into gibberish." Squinting, a few words became clear. "No, wait. It's just REALLY bad handwriting." She looked up at the Doctor, the look on his face betraying him as the owner of the terrible script. "Oh that's funny. Is that how they hand out jobs, where you're from? When you get to the end of primary school, they just look at your handwriting, and if it's completely illegible, they make you a doctor. My teachers would have made me rewrite this 'till it was right." And with no eraser marks, she wanted to add.

He made a face. "Never mind that, how far did you get?"

She shrugged. "All the way through the new-new maths book, and semi-quantum mechanics…which is why I started on the handwritten problems…" Her expression remained serious for a moment, broke out laughing, which she wouldn't stop.

Ignoring her, he pointed a finger towards the control room door. "So now you know my deep, dark secret. Lets go back to the library, check your work, then I've got a bit of a surprise."

The girl clapped, running to the door, down the hall, and into the kitchen. Sure enough, she had brought all of her work into the kitchen and had pulled a chair out for him. She was sitting studiously across from the stack of books. "Hungry," announced, an angelic smile plastered across her face.

"ALWAYS hungry," the Doctor clarified, sitting in front of the books. "You'll keep till I'm done with these, I hope." The crestfallen look on her face actually made him grin. Sometimes it was just far too rewarding, being a heartless bastard.

It only took a record three minutes before she began letting her forehead slam off the table. In another two, he was done looking everything over. "So, food now, or after you take a look at these few that aren't quite right…"

It was no question, and he knew it wouldn't be. "Food now. I'm dying of low blood sugar."

"You're a grade-A, first-class hypochondriac." Yesterday, she was going to die because he made her eat the crust from her sandwich and the day before that, it was because he'd given the staple remover back, after disabling the third setting and shutting down one of the internal computers. It wasn't good for much of anything, he had to admit, but he was hardly condemning her to 'extermination' just because she couldn't destroy the kitchen with it any more. But from the way she'd been moaning, you'd think he'd have personally shoved her in front of a blood-sucking alien unarmed.

The girl grinned. "Not my fault you're totally inept at child care and upkeep. 'Sides, if I were properly fed and hydrated, maybe I could read your terrible cursive…"

Opening the breadbox, the Doctor pointed a butter knife at her. "Inept? Inept! First of all, I didn't blow up the galley. Second of all, if you weren't so… complicated, we wouldn't have these problems. I mean—really? Who needs fed SIX times a day? I've met ninety-stone Larbees that eat less than you do, thank-you-very-much, smarty-pants." The girl was giggling to herself before he'd turned back to making the sandwich. He was glad he was so amusing. "Dinner, finish up what we were both working on, then by that time we'll be where we're going."

"And that'd be..."

"If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise." There was a twinkle in his eye when he said it, and she was certain he had something insidious planned. It was why she liked the Doctor so much. He was a different kind of evil than mum, but they were both thoroughly evil.

XYZ

The Doctor had practically needed the Jaws of Life to get her out of the ship in a dress. He'd explained that it wasn't their job to raise a ruckus; usually those things raised themselves in good time. And a little girl in a black jumper with neon pink jeans would draw a bit of attention to herself, where they were going. And he hadn't seen anything at all wrong with the frock he'd handed her. But it was again with the 'you're killing me' thing.

Then he'd gotten her out the door, and she'd taken one look around, and decided it was far too 'babified' for her overly mature seven-year-old self. "Those roller coasters don't even have loops! And look how short they are…"

However, she'd changed her tune promptly upon him telling her that these might not be as large as the one she was used to, but they also happened to have absolutely no safety mechanisms. Sure enough, that perked her up straight away, and she dashed out the TARDIS door, the bow holding back her insane mop of hair coming half undone.

"Trolley park, that's an amusement park to you, early twentieth century," he informed her as he walked out, hands stashed in his pockets. They were under one of the coasters, the police box stashed safely behind old parts and unused lumber, and obscured by hundreds of crisscrossing planks that held up each curving piece of track.

She, of course, wasn't paying any attention. The fence in front of her was the only thing she was concerned with. "I need to be taller."

Not bothering to answer, the Doctor grabbed the fabric in the middle of her back and hauled her up over the small chicken wire fence, then stepped over it himself. As he did so, he thought about his shoes. He probably should have changed them. Oh well. If anyone was looking at his shoes so hard as to notice they wouldn't become fashionable for another ten, fifteen years, then they were paying too much attention to feet, and he could call them out on being a fetishist.

She'd run up ahead, mostly because he took his time meeting her on the main path, cobblestone lined and curving among the rides, then leading to a man-made lake, which was inhabited by people in row boats meandering around at a slow but steady pace.

It was a warm spring day, and he was enjoying the sounds and the smells. Metal wheels on wooden tracks, the creek of the wooden carts as they twisted going around each bend…the vendors hocking from their carts, fruit, popcorn, cotton candy…

It was early in the park's operating day; families were just beginning to filter through the enormous gate, a cement archway with a crescent moon atop. Mothers in long dresses, herding children in high socks and short pants and girls in fluffy petticoats (the thing Violet was despising most about this whole experience), all coming in for a thrill and a laugh and dressed in their Sunday Best. Fathers with handle bar moustaches and round straw hats standing neither too close or too far from their wives, not breaking unspoken rules of decorum. Most had saved up for this day, and were determined to enjoy it, the one planned outing for the entire summer for a working-class family.

They smiled in the sunshine, amusement and distraction the order for the day. These were people that didn't know and didn't care that World War I was on their doorstep, and with the firing of one assassin's weapon, dark times would descend upon the world.

"You're thinking, again." Violet poked him in the side. "The sign says I need tickets to ride rides. There's the booth. So either fork up, or get in line. No standing in the path, THINKING."

The way she'd said thinking, you'd think he'd have done something rude in public. "Right. I'm going to let you handle the money. We'll end up with tickets for two rides and fifty-seven candied apples." He knew how she spent her pocket money, when he gave it to her. He wasn't the greatest with it himself, but he'd never spent everything he had on a hundred and ten tiny chocolate ponies, either.

He'd gotten tickets, going on two rides with her, and then leaving her to get on "The Rockets" with two nice little children whose mother approved of the company. All three of them were crammed into a metal cart held onto a central motor atop a large metal tower by heavy steel cables, the unit making use of centrifugal force to "fly" the little rocket carts around in endless circles. He'd better let her do this before lunch; he didn't think she was the type to lose it, but he also didn't want to find out, either.

Once the ride was started, he walked casually to the cotton candy stand. Behind the cart was a rotund man in a striped shirt, spinning the sugary substance onto "Big one for me, small one for the tyke, and sixty-four relative rotor repair kits, if you will."

The man stopped with the paper stick inside the noisy cotton candy machine. "And then who'd you be, asking for such things?"

The Doctor grinned. "Oh Plazus, don't you remember your old buddy, the Doctor?"

Squinting the looked deep into his eyes. "You were much older the last time we met." Plazus frowned.

"And you were going to prison the last time we met. Didn't think you'd turn up in this place. I thought Earth was off-limits for another hundred years."

A frown cutting across the man's face beneath his moustache, he handed the Doctor the two cones of candy. "When you're a fugitive, you're not too worried about pointless treaties with dead races. I suppose I can thank you for both parts of that."

A foot clipped him in the shin. "See, I KNEW it wasn't just fun! Trying to drag me out here with just the 'no safety features' thing… you could have just said you had something… else planned."

Not breaking eye contact with Plazus, the Doctor smiled, handing her both cones of still-warm cotton candy. "Sixty-four kits, and I won't tell the Confederacy where you are. That'd be, what? A double life sentence? Life for what you've done, and life for the escape?" The Doctor pulled Violet out of the way as another customer approached. He folded his arms over his chest, watching.

The Doctor handed over two coins, then stepped aside as a teenage boy stepped up to the stall. He waited patiently as the transaction took place. "You know," the Doctor said darkly, "I was going to let you go, you spineless little worm. But then you went and betrayed my companions and me. Sorry, I don't play nice when good people end up dead."

The vendor put on a phony smile as he took money from the child who looked like he'd already had too much, if the green look about his face was any judge. Then a couple stepped up. Once they were gone, Plazus glared at the Doctor. "I don't know what you need sixty-four of them for. You planning on blowing yours out… twice?"

The look about the Doctor was equally dark. "Never you mind that. I know you've got an entire shipment hidden somewhere here. I should take the whole thing. You owe me."

Violet tugged on his sleeve. "I'm hungry."

When he looked down, she shoved both empty sticks at him. "You just ate."

Her face was just as serious as the two adults. "You're going to buy me food. Right now." When it didn't look like he was going to budge, her frown grew even darker. "You're going to get me something to eat right now, or I'm going to run off, and then you're going to tell mum you lost me in a time that doesn't even have television."

Plazus laughed, quite satisfied with the interruption. "Your companions get younger and younger… and so do you. Go on, feed the child, before she tattles to her mother."

Grabbing the girl's hand forcefully, the Doctor pointed a finger at the vendor. "We are NOT done."

XYZ

Sitting across from her at a picnic bench, The Doctor watched her put away still more food. Perhaps there was a teeny tiny black hole in her stomach—or a tapeworm. "You can't use your mother as blackmail. What's this about?"

She licked her thumb. "I didn't like that man, and I didn't like the way you were talking to him." Her words lacked the childish frivolity that he'd come to love about her. It was more like a thorough scolding.

The Doctor slid on the bench, turning slightly away, uncomfortable with the scrutiny. "We have… history."

The girl let out a very unladylike burp. A few people turned their heads. The Doctor turned to them and shrugged with a smile, trying to laugh it off. Violet shook her head, really not caring what the natives thought of her. 'Blending in' wasn't one of her strong suits, he'd learned so far. "I didn't like it. You don't need-need parts. Otherwise the landing would have been a whole lot bumpier. There's something else, and… and I just don't like it."

It was almost as if she was prying in his brain again, but he'd been shielding, and he'd have felt it. She was just picking up that this wasn't a routine purchase or trade, or a routine blackmail for equipment. "Violet, you're very perceptive—clever. But there're some grown-up things you don't understand, so you'd be better off just letting me handle it, while you have fun."

And that was it… he lost her, she'd tuned out. It wasn't just what he'd said, but how he'd said it. Condescending. 'I'm the adult, you're the child, and you'll do as I say,' was the subtext, there. A teacher had said that to her directly once, and it had garnered much the same feeling. She knew she wasn't as smart as him. She knew he knew more about just about everything. But this was the first time he'd really rubbed her nose in it and really treated her like a small child, the way other grownups always felt the need to.

Her family knew better than to dismiss her as a stupid little kid, and the Doctor ought to have afforded her the same courtesy of humoring her. "Fine. Go do what you were doing," she told him coldly. "I have four more tickets, and the lines are getting longer. That should give you more than enough time. I'd also give me money for games, if you don't wish for me to bother you again."

She took the coins he'd stonily handed over and left the covered picnic pavilion without looking back. The Doctor took this as a testament to her ire, but it was only because she didn't want the Doctor to see the tears welling in her red eyes and catching there, unable to fall. Something was very, very wrong.

TBC

You get a biscuit if you know the park I'm talking about. If you do, please don't nail me on details, a few I stole from another nearby park that's still in operation (same with time period…I try my best, but I'm hardly going to cross my t's and dot my I's for a fanfic that I'm writing to amuse myself while I'm off work sick). I'm a font of useless information about theme parks. The original Ferris Wheel could hold over a thousand people at a time. See? Interesting… but won't save me in the case of a zombie attack.


	2. Chapter 2

Standard disclaimers apply… Thanks to Erica for the beta. No thanks to Krypto for being a pain in the you-know-what.

…to those that asked, yes, there was a Rose story in the works, but I was on all kinds of pain meds, and this came out : ) next time, I suppose : ) PS, healing is boring, boring work.

XYZ

Trolley Park Murders

Chapter 2

XYZ

True to form, the weasel was gone when the Doctor returned. A lanky kid with a greasy face and a hook nose was working the stand. When he asked where the big man with the moustache had gone, he'd been pointed to the picnic area.

Not wasting a moment, the Doctor turned on his heels, which let out a tiny squeak on the smooth cobblestone, and headed for the pine trees. It was a narrow and dark, overly shaded path where it was possible to see the sky peeking through the tall trees. Dodging a young couple with a large woven picnic basket, he made it to the covered picnic area, which was populated with scattered early-day lunchers.

On the other side of the pavilion, two shoulder-height pine trees shook in opposite directions. He leapt over the short wooden fence, and followed the disturbed foliage.

Up ahead, he heard the whirling blast of some sort of sonic weapon…being shot away from him. Following the sound, he found scorch marks on a thick oak tree. Further on ahead, he saw something hiding behind the ferns and shorter pines. Before he'd even leapt over the foliage, he knew what it was, but he made the jump anyway, coming to a skidding halt only a few feet away from the body.

Plazus lay face down in last year's musty leaves, a black scorch mark in his center. The Doctor knelt beside the corpse, touching the hot wound to get a sense of the age and style of the weapon. It might have been crude, but it certainly wasn't indigenous.

The Doctor was not the only person who did not belong in this place and time.

XYZ

Even though Violet felt like doing little more than running back to the ship and hiding under her bed, she went and found the boy and girl she'd rode the Rockets with. She'd never really been good at making friends when she was in school. As much as she tried to fit in, she didn't see the world the same way as they did, and it showed, mostly in how she spent her spare time at school—reading a book in some forgotten corner while everyone else ran and jumped and laughed. She used to run and laugh with the Doctor, but apparently she'd mistaken their relationship. Violet was, after all, just a stupid kid.

She didn't have a single thing in common with the twins, they were from another continent in another reality, and more importantly they were nine, but she'd try. The Doctor had just made it abundantly clear that she didn't fit in with the grownups, either.

"We were going to ride on THAT thing," the boy, Tommy pointed out.

Violet looked up at the multi-story high, slightly rusted wheel. "Oi." She was going to say something about them having a taller big wheel in London, but she was being 'inconspicuous,' or as inconspicuous as she was capable of being. And she had to also remember: no safety features. It was little, but deadly. And for some reason, that made it OK. "Then lets get in the queue."

…Of course, the Doctor could just be telling her that. But really—look at all this stuff. The occasional bar or leather strap was hardly a computerized breaking mechanism or restraining system on modern coasters and rides. She knew all about it. Her grandfather had explained it in detail during a particularly long line for a ride last summer.

Tommy and Ellen asked about where she was from, and if she'd come to the park on the trolley. She gave the very abridged version. They were all right, even if they seemed to not really need to talk to each other, they just knew what the other was thinking. She'd been reading about telepaths in one of the books the Doctor had given her, and it seemed to be like that, but a little bit different.

Violet felt hands on her hair, and she turned around. The children's mother smiled gently. The woman had a soft face, like her own mum's. Full cheeks and plump lips, and big, round eyes. "I was just retying your bow."

Violet wasn't sure what to make of that, so she just turned her head back around and let the woman finish, biting her lips. Mum tied her hair back, sometimes. It always fell out, so mum had never worked too hard on it, but sometimes she'd get the whole bit—hair tied up, spray… But most of the time it was two heavy-duty barrettes to hold the hair out of her face, and that was that. She'd tried to tell the Doctor it just wouldn't stay, but he'd said something about her fitting in, and she'd let him try.

The girl sighed. "You're welcome," came a gentle prompting from above.

Violet turned around, a bit embarrassed, not sure how long the woman had been done. "Oh. Sorry. Thank you. My—the Doctor did it up this morning, but he's dreadful with hair." Looking at that sorry mop on his own head was proof enough of that.

They advanced around a wooden fence as the ride reloaded. Seeming to sense the lack of female influence in the girl's life currently, the woman rested a hand on her head in a very motherly way. "And just where is your mother? She did not come with you today?"

Violet almost spilled into tears right then and there, if it weren't for the fact that she just couldn't cry lately. The snuffle stopped in her throat. "My mum… isn't with me any more, ma'am." That was an accurate summation. She was here, mum was there, the end.

And so far, the tiny tendril between their worlds could only handle one-way text transmissions, 166 characters apiece, including spaces, and only when they were near an exceptionally large sun. The Doctor promised it would grow, but she found herself doubting him and most things he'd ever said at that moment.

The woman made a sympathetic sound, then gestured for the children to proceed up the short wooden steps. "Tommy, why don't you sit with me? Then Ellen and Violet can ride together."

As she was climbing into the cart, she saw the Doctor on the other side of the fence. Arms folded across his chest, it wrinkled his suit jacket and pulled it up awkwardly. He was staring at her intently. Something was going on, and she desperately wanted to know what—but her hurt feelings were burning just slightly hotter than her curiosity at the moment.

The cart lifted into the air as the Ferris wheel began spinning. "Oh it's so high. I cannot believe mother isn't too frightened," Ellen squealed.

Something about her delight also excited Violet and the beginnings of a smile began breaking through her tension. It was hardly anything, compared to traveling through space and time. She had been eaten by a planet, after all, only last week. But she was happy for Ellen, who'd been nice to her for the whole half-hour of their acquaintance, and who was obviously having the time of her life. Maybe that's why the Doctor dragged the less bright and partially inept along with him throughout time and space. It made him happy to see them happy.

Tommy'd already explained that their father was content to sit on a bench in the shade and read the paper—he 'wasn't one for rides,' which they all took to understand that he wasn't brave enough for them. "Why doesn't HE ride the rides?" Ellen gestured to the Doctor as they came spinning back around again.

Violet shrugged, her mood dissolving back into unhappiness, which was aimed solely in the direction of the Doctor. As the ride came round again, she looked the other way, as if she'd never seen him there. "I s'pose he's far too grown-up for that."

XYZ

The Doctor left the body alone in the underbrush only about fifty yards from the main road. There was nothing that could be done for Plazus now. He'd also like to say the man hadn't deserved to be shot in the back, but he'd learned one thing in nine hundred years of traveling; most people wrought what they sewed.

It was a crude sonic weapon, possibly an early gun. The results would be written off as a freak lightening hit, despite being square in the back, and not at what would have been the highest point. Granted no one went poking around and discovered the body's… unique anatomy, all would be well.

That being said, people couldn't run around early twentieth century American trolley parks with weapons that weren't allowed in this section of space, per the Time Lord Cultural Development Treaty, regardless of who was, and was not around to enforce it. Whoever "they" were, "they" were probably not thinking that the last survivor of the Time Wars would just so happen to be hanging around to stop them.

His first thought had been to keep going, even though he was certain that whatever had done the shooting appeared to be long-gone by now. None of the trees rustled with movement, and whoever these people were, they were not stealthy.

The only energy trail the sonic screwdriver detected was from the TARDIS, so whoever had done the deed had either been camped out here for some time, or had killed Plazus with his own contraband weapon.

He was certain Violet neither wanted to see him right now, nor needed him at the moment. However, her propensity for getting into trouble rivaled his own, if her last 'adventure' with the sonic screwdriver was any indication.

Hands buried in his pockets, he weaved through the now-heavy crowd, past the water fountain with the cement fish spitting water into the air, past the Shoot the Chute, a simple ride that carried a wooden and rubber raft up to a fair height, came around a short bend, then dropped down a ramp and back into the large pool with the fish statue at the other end, then back to the starting gate on a little metal track.

Simple, but ingenious; and the line was wrapped around the cement pond. He had to dodge through it, which rather upset one older lady, who looked like she was going to bonk him on the head with her umbrella.

Stepping back from the line of people, he double-checked to make sure he didn't see a girl in a blue dress with wild hair that looked like she never wanted to talk to him again. He didn't look too hard at the carousel. A carousel was a carousel was a carousel in any time, and probably would be as interesting as yet another ham sandwich.

He was about to check the lines for the park's two miniature roller coasters when he saw her hair flapping about her as she got on the Ferris wheel. She was making an art out of trying to ignore him now as the ride started. There really was no choice but to wait.

The sign outside the fence claimed it was a 'replica' of the Ferris Wheel from the 1893 Worlds Fair. They left out the 'in miniature' part, the Doctor thought. Sure, it had nine spokes and eighteen cars, which was quite a lot, but it was hardly the 26 story, 36 car behemoth from the Fair. He knew; he was there.

That was neither here nor there. Of course it was there, but that wasn't the point. He had a very dead body in the woods, a girl who probably had no intention of helping him, after the way he'd behaved, and no idea as to who or where the shooter was. It was a pretty pickle, if he did say so himself.

The ride came to a halt, and there was even more waiting as the carts were unloaded. She exited on the other side, and was trying to duck away from him, but he grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the mass of people moving on to more rides and games. "C'mere, you. We need to talk."

She tried to wiggle her arm out of his wrist, but there was no match, really. "I don't think so."

The children's mother who'd been accompanying them had been walking off with her own brewed, but turned around, dragging the two kids with her. People pushed in the opposite direction, but she was watching Violet discretely twist her arm around in the Doctor's grasp.

"Violet, just stop it. Listen to me," he hissed, looking around. Comparatively, this was a scene worse than a tired child throwing himself onto the floor of a mall and wailing his little eyes out. More heads were turning. "You were right, I was wrong. Now just stop."

The statement caught her totally off guard, and she did. "Now, look. I was wondering if you'd like to help with something, or if you can behave by yourself for the rest of the day."

Her eyes met his suddenly, and he knew she was caught. He was giving her a choice, and she didn't know the motive behind it. She'd been handed an out, so if she wanted to sulk all day, she could, but really… with an offer such as he'd just given... Would she want to?

"I still have three more tickets," she informed him.

Disappointment settled into his stomach. Sure, he could do this by himself, if she could assure him that she'd stay out of trouble. However, he'd have no real assurances that 'trouble' hadn't seen him with her already, and wouldn't use that to it's advantage, whoever this 'trouble' was, and…it'd just be more interesting with her. He sighed. Fine, he had to admit it—he liked having her along. Oh, that had been a painful self-admission. Try saying that out loud, and he might just melt. "Alright. I suppose. But…it would have been nice to have you along."

Violet looked from him to the woman and then to the twins. "Maybe I'll see you all later?"

The mother had another sweet smile for her, letting her know that'd be nice, and perhaps they could picnic together later in the afternoon. However, she fixed the Doctor with a glare, as if she'd already sized shim up, and found him to be wanting.

The Doctor thanked her for watching after Violet, grabbed the girl's hand and took off towards the picnic area.

XYZ

They stopped in a grassy area beneath a maple tree across from the path leading to the picnic area. The Doctor hunched over, unable to recall towering quite so far over a traveling companion before. "Here's the history lesson: a thousand years ago, the Time Lords brokered a treaty that'd protect undeveloped parts of space from more advanced cultures. They had some silly Star Trek-esque 'prime directive' reason, as I recall, and that's all well and good. The summary: what we've got here is a fugitive smuggler from a prison satellite who's been hiding smuggled goods on a protected planet for at least ten, fifteen years. He gets shot down by a gun that probably shouldn't exist in this time, much less this solar system, Which means there's someone else here who shouldn't be, and this all happens half an hour after we show up. Coincidence? Don't believe in 'em. So our job: find out who 'they' are, and put 'em out of business. Now, am I still a big fat git, or do you want to help?"

Violet blinked once or twice, the rapid-fire explanation still processing. "Fine. You're still a git, though."

"Fair enough." He took her hand and started towards the picnic area, glad to have dodged that one. "I want to take another look back there, but I doubt we're going to find anything. We'll make it up as we go along from there."

It didn't take much explaining to let her in on what he wanted to do. He'd sit at a table, and she'd dash between the vertical posts of the fence separating the picnic area from the surrounding woods, and he'd go after her, ostensibly to go after an unruly child. By now it should be a different lunch crowd, and no one should notice he'd already dashed through here once before. The actual bounds of the park were a bit fluid at this point, but he could certainly deal with less attention being drawn at the moment.

Making their way through the trees, the Doctor retraced his steps, finding the scorched tree, and moved on to the underbrush where he'd left Plazus.

Violet scratched her neck. "You might just be 'directionally challenged,' like Gran. She got lost in an office building once, and it took us like an hour to find her."

The Doctor looked down at the ground, and the complete and utter lack of a body. "Jackie would," he muttered. "It was here, all right. Look at all the leaves. They're crushed and disturbed. And I'm sure that poor little plant would be happier if it hadn't been kicked and crushed…"

Turning around in a circle, he inspected the area. "Well, that's nice…" he trailed off, digging out the sonic screwdriver. "Nothing else is really disturbed. He wasn't dragged out of this spot, or rolled over…I can't see someone carrying that big tub away. Annnnnd, no energy trails. Again." He nudged Violet. "Betcha you're sorry you didn't stick around with your little friends now."

Her voice lacked its usual enthusiasm for the unknown. "No, not really."

The Doctor knew that as uncomfortable as it was going to be, they were going to have to have a talk at some point today. He thumbed over his shoulder. "Back to the park, then. We need to find out how long Plazus was here, and what he's been up to. Knowing him, he had something running."

TBC…


	3. Chapter 3

Standard disclaimers, and so on and so forth. Thanks to Erica for betaing 99 percent of it. Thanks to Krypto for betaing 1 of it.

XYZ

Trolley Park Murders

Chapter 3

XYZ

The kid now working the stand was marginally helpful. The dead smuggler had gone by the name "John Plazus," which Violet had commented was only one step above 'John Smith,' a statement for which the Doctor had no reply.

Plazus had been there at least twelve years, as far as the kid could tell, and he didn't know much more than that. The old guy ran his stand with an iron fist, and didn't ask the two assistants for personal information, nor did he offer any of his own. Plazus spoke to a few of the other vendors on a regular basis, and had certain arrangements with them for various things… none of which the young man knew specific details of, or even vague details, if the truth was to be known, but every little bit was a help.

They took off in search of the park management building, or maybe even a map to tell them just where that happened to be. Walking across an ornate wooden footbridge, they began scanning the other side of the small stream that lead to the lake for something helpful.

Violet stopped, looking down into the water. "If the lake is fake, how do the fish get there?"

The Doctor almost kept walking ahead, but he stopped and turned around, looking at her curiously. It was an actual sincere question from a girl who traveled in a space and time machine. "They bring them in from some place else."

She thought about that. "So they don't swim here, from somewhere?"

He looked up at the clear sky. They'd had other conversations like this. She'd never believe that fairies didn't make the bird pop out of coo-coo clocks. "They swim from the magic river where the fairies live." At what point in child development did they begin to accept the condition for the possibility existing that there was no such thing as magic, only the careful application of science?

Violet shrugged, entirely accepting this as a possibility. "Oh, ok."

As she continued after him, the Doctor shook his head. "Sometimes I wonder which version of the Twilight Zone I've walked into. The really good black and white version, or the sub-par color version they show on late-night television." She'd finished a book on semi-quantum theory and practice this morning, but it was also entirely possible that the large goldfish in the lake had swam there from a magical river.

"I'm not allowed to watch that," Violet informed him. "The creepy talking skeleton gives me nightmares."

Finding some buildings that could serve some administrative purpose, the Doctor pressed on. "That's Tales from the Crypt."

"Oh." Her little mind munched on that for a bit. "You watch a lot of television."

He stopped, staring down the path between the two buildings, looking for a promising door. "I was trapped once for two 'glorious' days in your grandmother Jackie's house, where there was nothing to do BUT watch the boob tube. Who runs horror show marathons in February, anyways? Oh wait. That was me. I rewired the box to pick up transmissions from the near past. THAT was my own fault."

That actually got a sincere chuckle out of Violet. "I got grounded for the rest of my life when I…y'know. Helped her hot rollers. With something I snatched from Section 8 at mum's office. Fried her hair almost off. What'd she do to YOU when you mucked up her telly?"

Two younger adults walked out of an unmarked door on the left. "Nothing." He scratched the back of his neck. "Came after me with a wooden spoon," he admitted. "Or a cleaver. I think the butcher knife was the time we soaked the kitchen floor with orange juice and electrified it to stop a bacterial-amalgamation creature."

He thought Violet was going to choke to death on the air, she was gasping so hard between laughs. "She really…loved you…to DEATH."

And Jackie would have cut him into little pieces too, if he wouldn't have jumped over the back of the sofa, crashed into the phone table near the door and ran as quickly as possible back to the TARDIS…then locked the door behind him. He could hear her out there, hacking away at the door for fifteen minutes.

If she wouldn't have gotten tired and given up, the TARDIS was going to get really upset and inflict some sort of defense maneuver on her. It'd have probably involved lasers, and then they wouldn't have found all the pieces of him…just the ones that floated to the top of the river now and again. "Ahh yes," he recalled sarcastically. "Good times. How's the old bat doing, anyway?"

The Doctor didn't wait for an answer, though. He walked over to the door after he was sure no one was coming out. No glass, so he had no choice but to knock. After grumbling permission to enter, he pulled the door open, squinted into the small space and tried on his best American accent. "This happen to be the park offices?"

The office was so dark, compared to outside. Violet looked first to the Doctor, then squinted at the thin man with the thick white hair behind the desk. He didn't look mean, per say. Just entirely not happy to see them. "Lost children go to lost and found, at the entrance," he grumbled.

The Doctor looked down at the girl like he'd just noticed it was weird for him to be clomping around with a seven year old. "Oh, her? Don't mind her, she's not lost. Well, I suppose that could be debated, but that's not why I'm here." He whipped out the handy-dandy psychic paper. "John Smith, Immigration." He coughed when Violet poked him in the leg. What? It was an old standby!

The man got up from the wooden kitchen chair serving as office furniture, came around the desk, and grabbed the bottom of the wallet, tilting his head up and squinting at the blank sheet it held.

Violet let out a heavy breath. Great. They'd just found the one guy in the universe psychic paper wouldn't work on. Personally, she liked to steal it out of the Doctor's coat, hide under the bed and watch the ponies dance across the little page. It was totally fake, and all in her mind, but it was fun as anything. It was also further proof that imagination was way better than the toys and games companies came up with and sold in shops to keep kids amused.

"Hmm, never had anyone from Immigration come around here before." A frown still plastered across his face, the man looked the Doctor square in the eye. "Is there something I can do for you?"

The Doctor smiled, knowing he had his foot in the door. "Routine follow-up, I'll be out of your way shortly. Just looking for records for a…" he pretended to consult his memory. "John Plazus. Anything you have. I'll flip through it, make sure everything's in order, and we'll be gone."

Walking over to the boxes that served as a filing cabinet, the man began opening lids. "Ahh. Yes. That must be why you brought the little one."

The men exchanged a grin. "Oh yeah, this routine stuff…you're in, you're out, whole rest of the day free—might as well let her have some fun. She just loves the carousel."

Violet didn't say anything. It wasn't fast, and it didn't have the potential to wreck and kill her… so she'd avoided the carousel in the center of the park thus far. However…she did like horses. Maybe she should give it a try.

Tossing a folder onto his desk, the man gestured for the Doctor to take a seat. "I have some things that need to be done. I'll return in a few minutes." The manager closed the door and left them in the ill-lit space that smelled a bit like mold and cigar smoke, particles hanging in the shafts of light coming from the tiny windows.

And he left them to it. Just like that. The Doctor flipped quickly through the records. Violet just watched, entirely unsure of what help she could be. "Not to criticize, since I've been doin' this stuff for all of a week, but that was too easy."

Grabbing two pages, the Doctor folded them quickly, tucking them into his pocket and then slammed the folder shut. "I know. I could just be that good, or we might be in trouble. I have a home address. Let's go."

XYZ

Violet tried to open the door, but it wasn't budging. "You're not that good."

Shaking his head and ignoring the insult, the Doctor tried the sonic screwdriver, which wasn't helping. It must have been blocked from the outside. Putting a hand on the girl's chest, he pushed her back about four feet, giving himself room to work. "Regardless of whether this works or not…it's going to really hurt."

Before she could ask what 'it' was, the Doctor slammed his shoulder into the door, which didn't give. "You have to kick it. I think the shoulder thing only works on television. That's what Uncle Mickey said."

The Doctor tried a flat-footed kick to the door, it didn't budge or give in any sort of way that'd indicate progress had been made. "Well, that really worked. Does 'Uncle Mickey' the idiot have any other advice?"

Violet's jaw locked and she ground her teeth for a moment. "Well, at least Uncle Mickey always tells the truth about stuff. If you can't kick a door down, that's not his fault. And when I get home, I'm going to tell him you called him an idiot."

Folding her arms across her chest, she marched behind the desk, staring at the back wall.

Clenching his eyes shut, the Doctor cursed his rude mouth. Adults just accepted that he was as he was (or the just didn't like him—which was OK too). But how was a child supposed sort that out? "Violet, I'm sorry…I didn't mean to say anything bad about 'Uncle Mickey…'" Aurgh. Could he be any more horrible at this?

YES, he could, he thought… going waaaay back in his mind to all those enormous rows (which he was an equal participant in) with Susan, who was just as willful as this one was… only he'd been a bigger hard-case back then. Why hadn't the universe protected him from child-rearing?

No—why hadn't the universe protected children from HIM? "I know a lot of things. I know how to make egg salad, and I know the last number in pi, and how to save the world, and all kinds of other neat stuff, but I've never been good at this whole…being charge of others thing." So much for it being fun and easy.

He couldn't call it for what it was out loud. There was still some broken part of him that had trouble admitting things. Hell it had taken him seven and a half years after he'd lost her to admit that he had feelings for Rose Tyler.

The girl faced the wall in stony silence, not interested in his explanations.

"Violet, come on. I don't think you're stupid, and as much as it pains me to say it, Mickey isn't stupid either, and your gran is a wonderful lady…" Now he was laying it on a bit thick.

And still getting no response.

Pulling a fruit crate turned file storage locker over to the nearest filthy window, he stood on it, looking out. There was a figure at the door, shifting his weight to and from. The Doctor couldn't make out who it was, so he kicked the box back to where it had started. "Ok, fine. Look, you can hate me passionately and all kinds of other wonderful things as much as your little hearts desire, but for right now… get under that desk and don't come out till I say so."

The girl ALMOST ignored him…until the door swung open with such force that she ended up ducking anyways, out of shock more than obedience.

XYZ

The office was too dark and the sunny day too bright. The Doctor only saw the silhouette of the person holding the boxy handgun sized weapon. Truth be told, whoever it was, he looked like a Han Solo cardboard cutout.

He was certain a normal human wouldn't have seen the gun amongst the dark features, so the Doctor decided to try his hand at the roulette wheel. "Wow. That's great timing," he announced to the faceless figure. "I've been stuck in here for…twenty minutes! And it's hot and stuffy in here. This place smells like spores and fungus something fierce… Much obliged for the rescue. Well, everything looks to be in order here. Perhaps I'll just be on my way…"

The figure raised the weapon, pointing it right in the Doctor's face. "ENOUGH. I've forgotten how you like to talk. You've changed faces, Doctor."

Slowly, the Doctor raised his hands, acknowledging the weapon. "You seem to have me at a disadvantage."

"Then we'll leave it that way for now." The man in the doorway held out his free hand. "The sonic screwdriver."

Slowly reaching into his jacket pocket, the Doctor drew it out, handing it over. Playing along with the whole captive thing (even if it wasn't all that far from the truth) seemed like the quickest way to get to the heart of the matter.

He didn't have to wait long. "We've waited a long time for you, Doctor, watching Plazus, knowing you would return for your accomplice. Where are your companions?"

Well, that was certainly a version of the prison satellite story he'd never heard. "No companions here," he sad jovially. "Yup. Annoying little buggers. Always getting into trouble, and if they weren't doing that, kept wanting me to behave all civilized-like, and such. Dropped 'em back at home ages ago."

"Then you will take us to them. Justice will be served."

The Doctor shook his head. "Come on, don't tell me you people have never heard of the time wars. I CANT take you to them." Anything resembling humor dropped from his voice. "I can't take you to them, because they're dead, you idiot. ALL of them. They were Time Lords and the Time Lords are gone. So go bark up some other tree about justice. And just who the hell do you think you are, anyway?"

The figure took a step into the room. He hadn't yet moved beyond the enormous backlight known as the sun, so the Doctor couldn't quite make out specific features, but he was wearing the jacket of a satellite jailer; a marshal if the Doctor was remembering correctly. "I am doing my job," his captor ground out.

"An awful lot of effort just to capture little old me, don't you think? I mean… leaving Plazus on earth, to his own devices, for twelve years, in the hopes that I'd take pity on him, and boost him off this rock? What's the rest of the game?"

The gun lowered toward the desk behind him, behind which Violet was hiding. "The 'game' as you call it is ended. For you and your newest little friend, at least."

TBC…


	4. Chapter 4

Standard disclaimers… Thanks to Krypto and Em and Erica for the beta help  SO bitter about having to rewrite the last page because it GOT EATEN. I was really happy with it too. Hopefully this is also swell.

XYZ

Trolley Park Murders

Chapter 4

XYZ

Violet turned around while she was walking, and actually managed to trip over her own two feet, landing squarely on her behind. She'd like to say she'd planned it. The truth was, between squinting in the light and the man with the gun jabbing her repeatedly with his pointy pocket (the gun in the pocket thing was SO over-done), and being so angry she wanted to tell him where to put said gun when he poked her one final time and her bow came undone (thus knocking the hair into her eyes and making it even MORE difficult to see)… she'd just got twisted around, and ended up scraping her wrists on the stone ground.

The man permitted the Doctor to drag her to her feet. "Come on, now. Just keep walking straight ahead," he told her evenly, dusting off her skirts. As he did so, she felt him taking something out of her pocket. That thing she was supposed to have left in the TARDIS. Well, if he needed it, she couldn't be scolded for having it, ya?

The Doctor then ground his teeth just a bit and she got a huge 'ok to misbehave' vibe from him. Oh she did like it when he let her be bad.

She looked up at the man before turning back around and continuing on through the crowds, past the rides and lake, towards the rear of the park. Where the lions and stuff were. They were probably going to be fed to lions, which she'd be upset about. However, if they lived, she was going to make the Doctor get her a kitten. She had a plan all worked out for it. It involved blackmail, but it'd work.

The man had rough, sun-weathered skin and eyes like drill bits. They were black and seemed to swirl, like looking at the end of a bit, Violet thought. He had one of those shovel jaws, like a Dick Tracy character with a mouth just as thin. The nose, however, was bulbous. It looked like some kind of dangling pear that was so heavy it was dragging the tree branch down, and would drop to the ground at any moment.

He was tall. Tall was relative to a shorty like her, but he was taller than the Doctor, so that seemed awful tall. His weapon was right at her head height, and it only took about fifteen paces before he jabbed her with it again. The idea was that she got to be the child-hostage, and as long as the gun was trained on her, the Doctor would behave himself. She thought it was a right lousy idea.

Swatting at the back of her hair, she turned around again. "I'm not allowed to be a hostage. My mum said so. She's going to be very cross with both of you when I tell her that I've been taken hostage, and that I'm in trouble for something someone else did, and that I'm being fed to lions, and I'm not getting my homework done, and…"

The pocket was in her face suddenly, two inches from her nose. "That's enough." He looked at the Doctor, loathing making his eyes do the spinning drill bit thing that made Violet's skin crawl. "And you. It disgusts me that you'll pick these poor creatures up from anywhere and drag the young and gullible around with you throughout space, corrupting them. The Time Lords might have stood for that sort of thing, but they're not here any more, now are they?"

This whole affair went on very quietly with clipped, inconspicuous movements outside the single-floor white Victorian casino building. Violet wondered what would happen if she caused a scene. She wondered how much this man had to lose by her pushing him. Although, she really didn't want to end up scorched clean through just to have curiosity sated. That was one of the Doctor's early rules, somewhere in the teens, regarding getting into trouble in the universe: saving people was worth dying over. Having curiosity sated…well, not so much. They'd covered that rule somewhere around the time when she tried to open the plasmoid-broiler door, just to see what the pink and green things were that she saw shooting past the grill.

A smile slowly pulled back on the Doctor's lips. "The amusing part is that you know so many things that aren't so."

"Yeah!" Violet added, having absolutely no idea what the Doctor was talking about. "And I didn't get picked up, I'll-have-you-know. I landed on the Doctor's doorstep. So there." She pushed his pocket away from her face, growing a bit bolder. "And I'm allergic to wool, cotton and poly-cotton blends. So stop it. Unless you want me to breathe in wool particles and go into anaphylactic shock right here in public. I can do it, you know! I'll just do it RIGHT HERE!"

The man actually backed up, keeping the pocket a 'safe' distance from her face. The Doctor gave her a wink, and she felt satisfied that she'd done some bit to aid their cause with that.

XYZ

The bit about poly-cotton blends almost made the Doctor start laughing. However, when she said she would go into anaphylactic shock just to spite her jailer, the Doctor had to bite both of his cheeks to keep from losing it. The fish came from a magical stream where the fairies lived, but she knew what anaphylactic shock was, and could use it correctly in a sentence. She confused him and he delighted in it.

In the course of the child's entire monologue he'd almost lost hold of the confiscated device in his pocket, too. Digging his fingernail into the tiny screw holding the rubbery cover in place, he tried to turn it discretely. Oh she was going to have a good time with this one, later on. He'd spent a good ten minutes disabling the third setting and convincing the secondary computer to shut down in the sonic staple remover before giving it back to her, and now here he was, re-enabling it. Blind, one-handed, without the help of his trusty sonic screwdriver, in public and under the watchful eye of somebody who'd probably shoot him if he sneezed, then sleep tonight with a clear conscience. Fantastic.

"I'm far too young and far too adorable to be eaten by lions, my mother said so. So if you intend to feed me to the lions…"

She was nudged forward. "Keep walking and you'll live. We might even take you home to your mummy, provided he hasn't had you do anything illegal. However, if you start up again, or if he attempts to escape, I WILL shoot you, child."

Huffing, Violet turned back around and continued walking, the man right behind her and the Doctor to his left. Just for the record…getting captured was a terrible, terrible plan and she did not approve. "Why not just let her go?" He tried to make it sound like a suggestion, more than pleading. "She's got nothing to do with what happened on the satellite. I just brought her here because she likes the carousel. You know kids and horses and all that…"

"Uh, uh. I am the man with the gun, which means I'm the only one that does any talking." He pointed with his chin to the house containing the small zoo of exotic animals. "In there, Doctor."

Violet spun around and looked at the Doctor, a look of intense concentration on her face. "Hearts. You said hearts, plural before. When you said how much I could hate you."

"If you don't turn back around, I will shoot you."

The girl didn't turn back around, stopping in her tracks. "Hold on a second. He said hearts, plural. I'm sure of it."

The man looked as though he could wring her neck. A feeling with which the Doctor could sympathize. "I said hearts," the Doctor interrupted. "It could have been plural, it could have been possessive. Now just do what the nice man says."

Over ten millennia the Vorpins had modified their eyes to see in the dead of space, where their satellite colonies existed. It was still a little unnerving when their eyes refocused like a camera lens, light reflecting off the exterior, slightly obscuring the blackness of the lens casing. It was like that, but with eyeballs. So when the marshal looked at the Doctor, he actually looked away, at the man's collar. Of course people wouldn't think the angular suit was strange here—they were at the Trolley Park. They had tigers and roller coasters and scantily clad women who walked on high wires. What was a man in an odd uniform?

Those weird eyes swiveled down to bore into the girl again. In four hundred years they'd have lasers shooting out of them, but for now the unnatural refocusing was enough. "He's a Time Lord. Of course it's two hearts, not that it matters. And not 'a' Time Lord, I suppose. THE Time Lord is more like it. Bet he hasn't told you what he's done, has he?" Without further elaboration, he pointed to a large metal door. "In there."

"I've done loads of things," the Doctor covered quickly. "Most recently I've blown up a junk planet. I can show you pictures…"

After Violet had followed the man's instructions and opened the heavy door, she was pushed inside. "Why don't you two have a nice chat. She can find out about just the sort of man she's traveling with. One who imposes his chaos on other societies, who breaks their laws, then disregards their sentences…One who destroys his own kind."

Pushing the Doctor through the door and back into the dark, he let it slam shut behind them without another word.

XYZ

Violet rubbed her running nose with her sleeve and then began trying to get the dirt and dust out of the new collection of scrapes on her hands and wrists. The place was dark like…well, she had nothing to compare it to. She still slept with a nightlight on, and there was not even a bit of light sneaking under the door.

The place was cold and damp and also smelled like the monkey house at the zoo back home; humid, fruity and…poo-y. She wasn't able to see it in the blackness, but it hurt an awful lot, so it must have been doing something. "I don't want to be eaten by lions today."

Beside her, the Doctor brushed off his own hands, digging back into his pocket for the sonic staple remover. "You make it sound like there's a good day to be eaten by lions. 'Oh, I'm sorry, today isn't a good day. Perhaps I can be eaten by lions a week from Thursday? That would really be better for me. Really? Let me pencil you in.'"

He had two hands, but the device was impossibly small and the darkness wasn't doing anything for him right now. He didn't hear anything in the pen with them, though the space sounded relatively large and with a high ceiling, at least from the way their voices echoed off of the cement walls. A round or octagonal shaped room not abandoned long by the smell or by the firmness of the hay scattered beneath them.

"Yeah, well, it's true. I don't want to be eaten by lions today." She was silent for a bit, and the Doctor knew her little brain was mulling something over. "So," she began very quietly. "Wanna fill me in on what Captain Crazy was talking about?" It sounded like she was giving him just enough room to hang himself, or to deny the whole thing. Perhaps that was what she was hoping for.

The Doctor paused in his tinkering, looking up from the device that he was glaring at despite the lack of light. "Violet, I can't believe… come now. Your mum must have explained some of this to you."

Again she was very quiet. It dragged on so long he actually went back to the staple remover. It sounded like the silent treatment, if ever he heard. "No." Her voice was tiny, and it reminded him of just how young and small she was. "She didn't say anything at all about you. Until it was almost time to leave." He could hear her sniffling, and it put a pressure in his chest he couldn't remember having ever felt. "She didn't say nuffin about you killing people or--or anything."

The part that the Doctor didn't get was why she hadn't figured some of this out on her own. "Violet, when you're laying in bed at night, and it's quiet, and you can hear your heartbeat, have you noticed that it goes bumpa-thump-thump, bump?" Might as well take this slow, figure out just how much he had to explain.

"Yeah."

Alright, he still had her. That was a good sign at least. "And have you ever sat on your mother's lap, and put your head on her chest, and listened to her heart? Have you heard it going thump-thump, thump-thump?" Violet said yes to this as well. "Don't you think it's a little weird? That your chest makes one sound, and hers makes another?"

"Gran said I had an ar-arrhythmia." She sounded frightened, like figuring out things that she knew to be true would somehow change her. The Doctor could sympathize with that. But this was still a necessary exercise. He just hated they were going through this in the dark while waiting for the universe only knew what to happen.

Still unfinished, he slid the device back into his pocket. "Jackie would. Now come here. Sit on my lap." His first thought was that she'd do something like that to spite him. Hadn't he given Jackie what she wanted? She had her family safe and whole, she had Pete, and Rose wasn't traipsing about the universe with him any more. What the hell else could Jackie have possibly wanted?

But as Violet actually did as he asked (for a moment, when she didn't move, he thought she wouldn't), and he felt her comfortable weight as he put both arms around her, he knew why Jackie would do a thing like that.

However, despite what Jackie's feelings might be for the Doctor, she'd never appeared, from what Violet had told him, to do anything other than spoil the girl rotten, play with her endlessly, and do 'girl things' together. In all the times Jackie had come into their conversations, the girl had never given him any indication that Jackie had treated her as anything other than a normal girl. It wasn't a slight against him, he realized, she'd done it FOR Violet. Which made Jackie a class-act. He'd thank her one day if and when he had the chance

He pressed her head to the middle of his chest so she could hear both sides and didn't say anything for a moment. "Sound familiar?"

Violet shook her head no, even though he knew it sounded the same.

The Doctor sighed, a bit sad that he was about to break up any illusions she might have had about fairness and sameness and fitting in. "It's a binary cardio-pulmonary system. It's good for all kinds of things, like supplying the extra oxygen we need to our brains, plus a handy-dandy respiratory bypass system, incase we end up on a planet that's got air that's less than breathable. It also supplies the extra energy and circulation needed for something called regeneration. Your mum never said anything about THAT?" he asked in disbelief.

Against his chest, he felt the girl shaking her head. He wanted to ask WHY? Why would Rose just NOT tell her any of this? But it wouldn't be something Violet was capable of answering. It'd be something he'd have to ask her himself one day. "Well, that's a whole science lesson right there. Remember when the man was saying that I looked different? That's why. Whenever you regenerate, every single last bit of you changes, and you look like someone new."

"Why?"

Kids did ask the tough questions, didn't they? "Time Lords naturally have very long lives. But regeneration makes them still longer. It used to suit us well enough. We kept the order in the universe. Nothing past its time, nothing behind its time… that's what the TARDIS's were for. They were strictly tools for keeping order in the universe. Then the Time Wars came. The Daleks were always a threat, but once they achieved the ability to move through time, like us… I won't ask you to understand, sometimes I still don't. But it was the only way to stop the Daleks from destroying all of time and space. Believe me…I didn't want to do it. If there had been any other way…But yes. I destroyed the Time Lords. It might have been for some 'greater good,' but he's right. I destroyed my own kind. My own people. Just like that." And we're all that's left, he wanted to add.

Instead of pushing away, she actually hugged him. "I'm sorry."

It was such a tiny gesture, but it was so much. He kissed the top of her head, just taking a moment to breathe in the scent of her hair. He wondered what it would have been like, if they lead a normal existence. If they'd have been having other talks far less stressful than this from the arm of a sofa while flipping through Saturday morning cartoons, her mother making breakfast in the kitchen…

For a moment he could almost smell syrup and fried eggs, if he clenched his eyes shut hard enough. He didn't know what kind of life they might have had, if they'd not been separated, it was best not to dwell on what wasn't, and what couldn't be. But this current situation…hardly seemed fair.

He sighed. There was no point in dwelling on what hadn't been, and what couldn't be. He had what he had, and he should just be grateful that the universe let him have that much.

But Violet…

The Doctor was a master of avoidance. You didn't live as long as he had by allowing yourself to be swept under by loss, remorse or regret. There just wasn't room for that and carrying on. Violet didn't have a hundredth of that baggage, she only had a handful of years' experience in dealing with the world, and couldn't be expected to understand his manner of approaching the world around him.

She was just a small child. She didn't understand the cruelties of fate, nor should she have to. They had, however, been inflicted upon her, and she was being forced to cope. Ultimately, she was a small girl who missed her family. That much was evident when she spoke of them, always in the present-tense, as if this were but a brief respite from her continued existence with them.

And when she spoke of family, there was someone glaringly not included in that strange collection of individuals that had somehow come to include another reality's Peter Tyler and Mickey Smith, the not-so-idiot. "I know I'm a poor substitute for everyone you've left behind, but I hope some day you'll think of me family too." He'd never hated to have anyone call him the Doctor up until now. If a title could be a name, he could think of something else he'd prefer to be called, but that seemed to be another concept to tackle slowly and at some other time.

"And you've been terribly brave about it, but I know how much you miss your mother." That much was evident in the whole 'stiff upper lip' bit that Violet put on, every time Rose came up in the conversation. "And that's alright. I miss her too. She was…my best mate in all the universes." And other things too, but another thing that was best saved for another time.

Violet nuzzled her head against him just a bit more, like she'd drift off to sleep at any moment. He'd really done absolutely nothing in his life to deserve this moment. "That's funny. She's mine too." This conversation had been uncomfortable for him, but a long time coming and fully necessary. Still…he was glad for it, despite the truly lousy circumstances.

The Doctor pulled out the sonic staple remover again, going back to working on it even with both arms still around the drifting girl. "Then lets say this," he began, finding the tiny switch for the secondary battery and switching the second computer back on. "We do what Time Lords do and find out what's happening, kick these clowns out of this sector of space and steal all their out-of-time toys. Then we can dash off a message to our mutual best friend and enjoy the rest of our day at the park. Or we can go to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and ride a real Ferris wheel. Your choice."

Violet sat up, letting out a little chuckle. It was always the same—traveling through space was unamazing. Traveling through time? Greatest thing since sliced bread.

Power sources and control mechanisms reconnected, the Doctor fired up the small red light that indicated a functional unit and took a look at their jail cell. "I just mean—if that one's too small…" his words ran dry as he looked at the back wall.

The girl twisted around to see what had shut the Doctor up, and she drew in a sharp breath. "I'm no expert, but that CAN'T be good."

TBC…


	5. Chapter 5

Standard disclaimers apply. Thanks for Krypto for pointing out the paragraph with many he's. Moo ha ha. Two parts in two days. I'm like smokin' on this posting thing. Which is good, cuz I already started the Rose adventure (for those that asked). You know, I don't know if I've said it lately, but you guys are swell : ) Everybody's been really great with feedback and interest and such. It's actually rather refreshing to hear what's on people's minds.

XYZ

Trolley Park Murders

Chapter 5

XYZ

Getting to his feet, the Doctor scratched the back of his neck. "That's loads of not-good. A festival of things that aren't good, even."

Violet was brushing the straw off of herself. "That's… three, I think. It's hard to tell. And they don't smell. So they're…new." She shuddered. They'd been sitting in here, all that time, with THAT on the far end of the room.

The Doctor walked over, prodding one of the bodies with his foot. "Same weapon that killed Plazus. This one's human. I'm guessing wrong place, wrong time. This one is NOT human. Disguised pretty well, though. He might have been here for a while. And this poor soul? No way of telling with my sonic screwdriver."

Pressed up against the round cement wall were a dozen crates. The Doctor opened one of the lids. "This'd be the shipment that Plazus was sent up for smuggling." Everything was making less and less sense. Turning around, he saw Violet looking very tiny and alone, her back to the door. "C'mere. They won't hurt you," he said softly.

He held out a hand, but she just shook her head 'no.' Now was one of those times when he was reminded of just how young she was. Potential learning experience or no, she wasn't crossing the floor. "Right," he said flippantly, trying to let her know it wasn't a 'big deal' and that he wasn't disappointed in any sort of way or anything like that. "If you will, permit me to think out loud. Which I suppose you can do from over there. Here we have the stuff that got Plazus arrested and thrown in prison on a prison satellite for, an entire shipment of stolen and smuggled goods. Plazus was hiding on earth. Whoever that marshal was, he was also hanging out on earth, for an as-yet undetermined period of time."

The Doctor began pacing back and forth, hands stuffed into his trouser pockets. "And that fellow, he seemed right obsessed with order and laws and such, so I can't imagine he was helping Plazus hide this stuff. And why kill Plazus now, if he's been here for so long? Why kill him after he talks to me? Because he was going to tell me something. Knowing Plazus as I do, it probably wasn't a warning that this bloke was gunning for me, pardon the pun, so what was it? What was Plazus going to tell me? What got these other people killed? How does this tie into that man's overly-stringent sense of justice?"

He especially wanted to know this in relation to Violet. Why would the marshal offer to let her go, if only she hadn't been forced to do anything illegal by the Doctor? Who would hold a seven year old responsible for things she was made to do by a grown-up? If the fellow's sense of justice ran so deep, it didn't surprise him that these other people had ended up dead. The Doctor just didn't understand why, or more importantly 'why now.'

Violet had been biting her lip up until now, finally she stopped chewing on it and managed to drag her gaze from the dead bodies to the Doctor. "And why're we here, and why're we still alive?" Her voice was small and timid, barely crossing the space between them. "I mean—what're they going to do with us?"

She did ask the right questions. He'd give that much to her.

The Doctor pulled the folded sheets of paper out of his pocket. "I think this comes back to figuring out what Plazus was doing here, what game he was playing. Which means we get out of here and figure this out."

Walking over to the door, he tried to do the subtle thing and use setting two, which was really just for industrial staples and not much else. It didn't do anything, of course. He had a sordid history with the "everything else" setting, mostly involving cupboard doors swinging off their bottom hinges and clipping him in the head (children should come with a warning label about giving you brain damage).

Flipping it to setting three of three, the Doctor aimed it at the door, he looked away, fully expecting the thing to blow off of it's hinges, or disintegrate completely, but nothing happened. "Well, I put everything back together right." He was fairly certain. Working in the dark aside.

Violet ripped the thing out of his hands and tried it herself, as if that would somehow make all the difference. "You broke it."

Making a face, the Doctor took the device back. "I didn't break it. But my sonic screwdriver wasn't working in that office, either. I'm thinking sonic dampening fields. That's why I couldn't get a fix on any sort of foreign power signatures. I should have at least gotten one from a sonic weapon, if it had been used."

Of course, this just left him with more questions and even fewer answers.

"So does this mean we just wait to be fed to the lions?"

"You're not getting fed to the lions," he reiterated, contemplating their options. "And we're going to get out of here. It's hardly like I'm completely useless without the sonic screwdriver. Otherwise I wouldn't have survived this long. Nine hundred years is a long time to survive traveling in time and space if you don't have wits about you." Crossing the vast, musty space, the Doctor began digging through the crates. "We have here…one partially functional sonic device, twelve crates full of…" he opened a random lid. "Stuff. All kinds of… stuff. And our brains, so we'll be out of here in no-time."

XYZ

No time ended up being about three hours. Violet thought she'd starve to death before they got out. She was also getting tired of holding the staple remover so that the Doctor could work by its penetrating red light.

Sitting on the floor, she tried to keep it steady, but boredom was setting in. "So, you're really that old?" she asked finally, having endlessly contemplated his off-handed remark about how long he'd been traveling through time and space.

"Yes I'm that old." He moved her hand, putting the staple remover where he needed it. "Little more light, over here." The miniature cold fusion battery was being a real pain and didn't want to connect to the time rotor he'd found buried in the bottom of the second crate he'd dumped.

Violet thought long and hard about this new piece of information. "I don't think I'd like to be that old." She desperately wanted to be older and more grownup, but that seemed like too old. "Seventy-eight seems like a good number."

The Doctor moved her hand again. "Seventy-eight? That is SO human. You might as well work on this right now: you need to stop thinking like a human. It's very limiting. And before you ask, no, I don't get bored."

Well, that covered Violet's next question. But she still had a ton more. "Why not think like a human? I mean, that's the only way I know how to think. What am I supposed to think like? A gorilla?"

He knew what she was really trying to ask. "Because you're not human, Vi." Working on in silence for a few minutes, he gave that time to sink in. "The Time Lord DNA is dominant, and what human DNA you do have has probably already been re-sequenced to reflect Time Lord genetics. You might look like your mum, but you're technically no longer your mother's child."

It was why the thread between their two universes hadn't appeared until recently. It had probably taken that long for the remainder of her human genetics to convert fully.

When she didn't say anything, the Doctor looked up at her. Her eyes were glassy, but she wasn't crying. She wiped her nose quickly with her sleeve, which was probably more telling than any tears she might have said. "Vi, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to just lay it on you like that." He should have just stopped at the not human bit. She probably hadn't even got the majority of what he'd just said—but she understood the sentiment. "Come on. Lets give this thing a try."

Finding a seam in the outer cement wall, the Doctor rammed two wires into the crack, then set the timer. "When this thing goes, we're going to need to be quick about this. Because I think whoever 'they' are…they're going to notice this."

Taking her hand, he lead her to a safe spot behind the crate furthest from the bodies. "Well, what if I want to be human. What if I don't want any part in this Time Lord business? Nobody asks what I want, ever." Otherwise she'd still be at home, with her mother, and trouble wouldn't follow her around like a little lost dog.

The Doctor put an arm over her head. He doubted the explosion would be big, but he didn't want any sort of debris falling on her. "Sorry, you don't have a choice, I'm afraid." And it wasn't entirely like he'd imposed this upon her. Truth be told…he still couldn't remember that night, other than occasional acid-like flashbacks to the singing. As far as Bob Ross happy accidents went, she was the best one ever, but still. You'd think he'd at least be able to trudge up one decent memory of that night that didn't involve his pants on his head.

There was a whirring sound, like a baseball card stuck in the spoke of a bicycle wheel. It seemed to go on and on. The Doctor looked up at the mini fusion generator, wondering if he'd wired it wrong, but then there was a sudden rush of air in the room, and he was closing his eyes against the stinging pulverized concrete cloud that had had filled the space. "Cover your mouth and nose," he ordered, holding a sleeve up to his own.

He walked over to the still-in-tact wall. They'd get around to the inner-workings of the pulmonary bypass system later, he'd probably traumatized her with enough information for the day. "Well, that's not how that was supposed to work itself out," he grumbled, looking back at her apologetically. The dust hung in the dim red light, and he could barely see her through the cloud.

Getting ready to grab the wire from where it was still lodged in the now-porous concrete, he stopped, concentrating on the tiny holes as a bit more dust fell away. "Nope. Never mind. It did what I wanted it to."

Violet moved from behind the crate, carefully crossing the space. "What? You meant to suffocate me?" Letting out a hacking cough, she put her sleeve back over her mouth a second later.

Ever so proud of himself, the Doctor held up his index finger dramatically, pressing it to the cement. The whole section of wall evaporated like a dried out sandcastle, the white cement turning to dust under his light touch and late-afternoon sunlight poured in. "Miniature time dilation field. Aged it a thousand years in thirty seconds, and taa-daa. One escape hole."

Cautiously, he poked a head out. No one in sight. Taking Violet's hand, he helped her over the rubble. "Don't you think you're just the cleverest thing."

Without bothering to clear any of the white dust from either of them, he took her hand and headed for the tree line at the rear of the park property. "Actually, I don't think, I know."

He grinned, beaming with confidence, as if he knew deep down that his 'superior' intellect would always triumph over cement boxes. He was worried, however. They'd been left alone in there for far too long. It gave him the sneaking suspicion that they'd been allowed to escape.

The Doctor knew better than to let on that anything was amiss, it would only worry Violet more, and the girl had enough on her mind. He could practically feel the gears turning in her mind. So for right now, he was nothing less than a miracle worker, and this was nothing less than a routine escape.

They crossed into a wooded area and he dragged her up a steep hill. Her legs weren't quite long enough to keep up, so he eventually picked her up, carrying her the rest of the way to the top.

Skirting past some pine trees, the Doctor pointed down at the park. "Decent view, huh?" Giving her a minute, he eventually put her down, and they began walking through someone's yard to get back to a main road.

He discretely looked around him, feeling as though they were being watched. No, it wasn't a feeling; he knew. Someone was waiting to see their next move.

Giving them exactly what they wanted, the Doctor pulled the paper out of his pocket, looking at the address. "Sure do hope this is in walking distance."

XYZ

It had been an uncomfortable walk, but it was all down-hill from there, fortunately. They passed a good bit of large stone houses, some with automobiles parked out front. He lingered, looking at one very non-standard yellow model, tilting his head while examining the grill.

"I think we were in the middle of something?"

The sound of Violet's sarcastic inquiry forced away the cloud nostalgia surrounding his head, and they continued down the hill. As they walked, the houses got smaller and more desperate. It was the same cobblestone road, trolley tracks running down either side, but it looked like another planet. The row houses were run down, the businesses all very bare-bones with hand-lettered sandwich boards propped up in front.

Finding the correct row of houses, the Doctor searched for the right door. It wasn't that difficult, each mail box was only a few feet from the next. The living spaces inside must have looked like bowling alleys.

Before he could climb the few front steps and knock on the green door with the peeling paint, a lad with an arm full of books rushed in front of him, throwing opened the door and slamming it. The boy was around fifteen years of age and possessed all the energy that went with it. "Mo-om! I'm ho-ome!" The sound was muffled through the single-pane window, but still unmistakable.

The Doctor immediately turned around with Violet in tow and began walking back up the hill. That was one question answered, and a few more questions beginning to have plausible explanations formed.

Violet wiggled her hand out of his, demanding an explanation. "Wait, we walked all this way, and you're not going to talk to them?"

Sometimes he forgot he needed to back up and explain things to for the 'kids at home,' as it were. "Plazus couldn't have been here longer than twelve years," the Doctor knew that for certain. The boy was unmistakably the offspring of the bulbous park vendor—the kid had flashed by, but the dark hair and nose were unmistakable. "Plazus hadn't escaped and hid out on earth. He'd escaped and returned home."

He knew Violet wasn't entirely following along, but she was at least playing along. When he took her hand and continued on, she didn't resist. "So, where to now?"

"Back to the park," the Doctor informed her. He wanted some answers. This time, at least, he had what he thought were the right questions. "This time, through the front gate."

TBC…


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimers am roxor!11. Thanks to Chef Erica and krypto for da beta.

XYZ

Trolley Park Murders

Chapter 6

XYZ

The Doctor felt a weird guilt that he'd never experienced before when he flashed the psychic paper at the gate attendant, informing the older woman that they had a seasonal pass. He certainly didn't want to give the wrong impression about what the psychic paper was for, right? But she was intelligent—she knew that they only used it when it was necessary, he didn't need to lecture about honesty…he hoped.

Who the hell was he kidding? He lied at least seven times, to at least four different people every morning before breakfast. Maybe he should just hope that she was smart enough to understand why. And not emulate him.

That hope faded as they quickly walked down the promenade, past the benches and a seven-foot statue of a cement fairy, and Violet informed him "I think I'd like to keep thinking like a human. If you think human, you are human, right?"

Oh yeah. Some lessons he was going to have to go really slowly with.

Heading back to the food vendors, the Doctor tried to speed up, but the 'short leg syndrome' caught up with them again, and he could hear her feet pattering quickly to keep up as he practically dragged her along. "You can be anything you want to be when you grow up, if you work hard enough…You can do anything you put your mind to. Except be human. It's just a genetic impossibility."

The girl sighed hopelessly, and he thought maybe that'd be the end of it. "Well, then you need to get me a cat."

She didn't think like a Time Lord, which was so obvious. Of course, she certainly didn't think like a human. Violet Tyler was in a league of her own, which was a very frightening thought. "I'll get right on it. However, we seem to be a bit busy right now."

The sun wasn't exactly setting, but it was falling in the sky. There were long shadows along the paths, and where the sun slipped past the tops of the trees, it was blinding. He almost missed his booth.

When he came to a sudden stop, Violet's momentum propelled her further past, his arm snapping her back towards him a moment later. "I don't mean right now. Of course we're busy." She said it like it was completely illogical and unheard-of that either of them do anything other than attend to the matter at hand with the utmost seriousness. Her next nugget of wisdom was stated with the conviction of a belief in a gospel truth. "I'm still human. Whether you say so, or not, though."

And wishes were fishes. Good old-fashioned denial. It'd probably land Violet in a heap of trouble some day. Denial was a powerful force. It had convinced Napoleon that Waterloo was a good idea and had brought about the fall of the Roman Empire. Well, that and lead cookery.

Back at the food stands, the young man who'd been so generous with information before was now clammed up. His greasy jaw was set, muscles standing out against hollow cheeks. The kid could stand the freshman fifteen, and then some. He looked like he'd blow over in the wind.

And he was doing an admirable job of ignoring the Doctor. "Please, sir. I have to tend the paying customers."

The Doctor handed over more pocket change, hoping it had the look of the right year to it—he was pretty sure everything in his pocket was depression-era, and that'd be not-so-good if anyone actually LOOKED at the coinage with anything more than a cursory glance. "Two cones worth, and you can tell me who Plazus was talking to before he took off for the picnic area."

As he was spinning the candy onto the cone, the kid's eyes darted back and forth suspiciously. "The business manager spoke to him. He just took off his apron and left. I saw him leave and covered even though no one asked me to."

The kid handed over the cones with a stiff, uneasy hand. "There. You have what you wanted. Please leave."

Instinctively, the Doctor shot out a hand, reaching for his tiny tag-along. He then turned, looking for Violet. 'Don't wander off' had never meant anything to his other companions, but Violet was actually rather clingy. Which was why he was surprised when he didn't sense her in the immediate vicinity.

Usually, by this point in the game the Doctor knew what the rules were and what was happening. Right now, he was standing in a crowd of people, hoping they'd deter the marshal (whom he suspected to be the foods business manager) from shooting him in public. He done the cliché thing and had lost a seven year old in an amusement park; he also had four dead bodies on his hands, and nothing resembling an explanation on the horizon.

When this was over with, he demanded a drink with a little umbrella in it.

XYZ

Violet didn't know why she walked away. She'd just done it after feeling very worried suddenly about something she couldn't quite put her finger on.

So she took the most logical course of action; when the Doctor was trying to coax information out of the boy in the funny pin striped shirt, and his mind was otherwise occupied, she started wandering around. Maybe she was looking for Tommy and Ellen?

Walking past the large skirts of a group of ladies her mum's age, she tried to look through the trees of grownups for the twins or their mother. They were her best idea of what she should be looking for.

The big light bulbs around the outside of the roller coaster began turning on, a section at a time, in anticipation of sunset. Without thinking, she began walking towards it. It just seemed like a good idea.

Digging into her pocket, she pulled out one of her remaining ride tickets and stepped into the fairly short queue. It was time for sensible people to be eating their third meal of the day. So far she'd only managed two and a large snack, which was hardly her personal six-meal minimum. The Doctor was trying to starve her to death, that was for sure.

When she spotted a man with an ugly moustache and shiny round spectacles looking at her, and trying to figure out to whom she belonged, Violet crept up further, sneaking past a middle-aged couple, up toward a lady with kids. That was all she needed—someone to drag her to lost and found because she was an unsupervised little person.

But what did she need? Why was she in this line? She had already ridden this baby-coaster already with the Doctor. He'd been far more excited about it than she had been.

The line moved up and so did she. Looking at the ticket in her hand, she wondered what the heck she was doing. Humans (and she refused to believe she was anything BUT) did impulsive things they didn't understand all the time, right? Her gran was certainly impulsive. When they went shopping together at least. They'd come home with all kinds of things they really ought not. But gran bought stuff because it was good or cool or pretty. Violet had no idea why she was standing in line.

The coaster pulled into the station and the platform rumbled overhead, shaking the dirt beneath her feet. When the breaks were applied, and the wooden cars stopped, it was like the earth kept moving, taking her along with it.

The feeling was weird and unnerving. Everyone moved up again, and she stopped at the edge of the ramp that lead to the wooden platform. It was just above her head, and she could feel every step the people on top took, almost every breath. Their anticipation and excitement hung in the air like garlic and salami—spicy and thick. The whole thing was nauseating.

Grabbing hold of the railing, Violet took in a few deep breaths, trying to clear the disorientation. She'd be so embarrassed if she threw up on yet another outing with the Doctor. It'd be even worse if she did it BEFORE getting on the ride.

Looking at her hand, she felt the ridges of the wood smoothed out by the oil of so many people's hands. It was like the railing was holding on to her, not the other way around.

Then she saw it—the gap between the railing and the planks forming the base of the platform. She had no idea where it went, but she knew it was where she was going. Patiently, she waited the entire course of the ride, then as the queue proceeded forward again, she quietly and inconspicuously slipped through the very narrow gap, walking into the darkness beneath the platform. Something was lost down here, and she would search for it. And when she found it, she'd know what she'd been searching for.

XYZ

The sun finally dipped behind the trees and lights began appearing like tiny dim stars all over the park. The place was thick with the smell of fried foods, music and sedated laughed filling up the distance like an orchestra of human crickets. Humans were funny little things—first there was their propensity to get lost, then their need to waste a full third of their tiny lives sleeping, then there was the fact that in every time and place, humans socialized best when food was somehow involved.

No one had seen a small girl with frazzled waves of hair go near the picnic area, so he didn't bother with looking back there. She might have been a thin and short slip of a thing, but the hair had a life of its own, and was nearly impossible to miss. But really—be honest now; hard was it to just not get lost?

The Doctor had always wondered about child-leashes. They always seemed cruel and more than just a tad demeaning to children, but under the circumstances, he was beginning to see their value. And shock collars. Shock collars for children should be legal in every system.

Because really—something they'll need therapy to get over was much more attractive than scraping up their tiny splattered corpse because they ran out in the street. Besides, everybody grew up needing therapy to recover from all the complexes they'd been given as a child. It wasn't like he'd be doing anything that unusual to her.

As quickly as possible, he checked the queues for all of the nearest rides. It was easy to do; the lines were short due everyone eating dinner. Circling the carousel as quickly as possible (like she'd be there), he headed to the nearest eatery. She had a hollow leg, but he hadn't given her any food. He had no idea what she'd be doing there, but he checked anyhow.

Maybe he shouldn't have pushed her on the human or not human thing. Maybe he shouldn't have elaborated on his part in the destruction of the Time Lords. Maybe he should have let her have the damned cat. Maybe she'd been around humans too long. She'd suddenly acquired their insane propensity for wandering off.

What was making this even stranger—he'd not run into the marshal again, or met any further resistance, for that matter. He'd have known if Violet had been snatched by the marshal or a minion, she'd have certainly let out a cry of some kind. She'd wandered off for some as-of-yet undetermined reason, and they were ignoring him.

It was an unpleasant decision to come to, because it implied the need for immediate action. The cement cell thing had merely been a stalling tactic. Whatever was happening, it was in-play at that very moment.

The Doctor gave a wince of anguish when he realized what he was about to do. He was going to go after the marshal and his cohorts and leave the girl to her own devices.

XYZ

The wooden planks rattled all around Violet as she walked among all triangular shapes made by the supports. She liked triangles. They were the second most efficient supportive structure in the universe due to their limited number of angles. Circles were the first, which was why the pillars of the great monolithic structures were nearly always round.

She might have heard that on television once, or something.

Coming from under the platform, she walked beneath the tracks that shot upward at a fairly steep angle, and then came back down again.

The whole apparatus shook as she made her way through the grass, to heaven knew where. She wasn't frightened by the shaking; compared to the rattling of the plates of the earth moving beneath her and the gurgling of the aqueducts that ran under this entire area, the rattling, creaking, stretching wood was the most stable thing on the planet.

Nothing lasted forever, though. The plates would continue to shift and would eventually pull the coaster apart, grinding it to splinters and finally nothing. The aqueducts would eventually give up their last sip of water, and the only thing that'd remain was dust that traveled on the wind on warm, humid days.

And Roman roads, of course. The whole world may one day turn itself inside out, the inside pushing outward, pulling the outer layer towards the core like the sinking, cooling wax in a Lava lamp, but Roman roads would always stay the same. She wasn't sure why.

It was getting darker, and it was harder to see the supporting beams. She almost tripped over one but spotted it at the last moment. Her foot slid round in her shoe, and it took a moment to retie the laces (the Doctor hadn't had to wear special clothes—she didn't see why she had to do something he didn't have to do). Getting back to her feet, she looked up and saw what she'd been looking for.

The back valley—the rear of the park's other roller coaster. It was about the same sad and pathetic height, but this one was painted white and was only lit on the front end. Scrambling among its supports, Violet headed towards the center of the maze and the huge pile of discarded and unused lumber.

Oh the Doctor wasn't going to be pleased. Violet just hoped he didn't shoot the messenger. She might have run off without telling him where she was going, but she was NOT responsible for what she saw before her.

Or didn't see.

The TARDIS was missing.

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

Standard disclaimers. Thanks to Erica for the beta. It's been fun, for real.

XYZ

Trolley Park Murders

Chapter 7

XYZ

A small, bare incandescent light glowed next to the door to the park offices. The Doctor looked both ways, and then reached up and unscrewed the light.

With just a bit of wrenching and pulling, the wires came loose from the stucco wall, and he pulled free the three clear optical cables that didn't belong there. This was all so… elaborate.

Whoever "they" were (besides the marshal—whom the Doctor still didn't buy as acting alone)…they'd certainly had the parts to execute something like this, with all of Plazus' cache, which had been hanging out in the miniature zoo for how long? It wasn't like Plazus could sell any of it. There weren't a whole lot of buyers for parts for ships that didn't exist on this world.

With the sonic dampening field disabled (at least in this building), the industrial staple setting worked just fine for unlatching the simplistic lock and gaining him admission to the office once again. No one was present this time, however.

Cutting on the lamp, the Doctor moved it to the edge of the desk so he could see better, then began digging through the crates and boxes of paperwork which were all stacked horizontally in the boxes. Obviously park management had not yet heard of Melville Dewey's delightful little invention of the vertical filing system, which would have made this so much easier. Dewey was a despicable overly-opinionated letch, but the whole classification system and vertical filing had helped the human race get into space a century and a half earlier than they otherwise would have, with their shoddy organizational methods.

It took him almost three whole minutes to find exactly what he'd wanted. The foods manager—the marshal, going by the name Parker Green (WORST name ever, the Doctor might add)—had been here for a little over a year. That was more than enough time to plan whatever was now in play. As far as the Doctor could tell—and he wasn't doing too thorough of a job checking the paper records (inefficient little things), the marshal appeared to be the only one here.

Looking over a list of facilities that the foods manager was in charge of, the Doctor bolted out the door and headed back to the miniature zoo, figuring that was the only place large enough to conceal whatever the marshal had been planning.

Jogging around the far side of the lake, he tried to keep an eye out for Violet. He could feel her in the general vicinity, but had no idea as to what direction or where. She was quite agitated, that much he was certain of, but was unsure as to the nature of the anxiety. His best bet was to find the marshal. If he did that, then even if he couldn't find Violet immediately, he'd know she was at least out of trouble.

XYZ

Violet desperately wanted to be taller. As she was dodging the adults, trying to look for white trainers peaking out from beneath trouser-legs, she nearly ran into half a dozen people before she even made it to the footbridge. Was it too much to ask for, just to be taller? Instead of entirely average for her age. Of all the stupid things to be average in…

Well, you're the dummy who wants to be human, she told herself. Which was funny, because she wanted be human, for real and really. But she also wanted to toss her cookies every time her overactive imagination thought that she could feel the centrifugal force swinging the earth around the sun.

She'd settle for a less over-active imagination, and taller for her age. That'd suit her nicely, she thought, as she slammed into a grownup's leg. "Sorry," she muttered, trying to slide between the woman's unwieldy skirts and the funny bowed wooden handrails that seemed to be crawling with termites only her over-active imagination could see. Really. She could just hurl. It was the Doctor's fault, putting stupid ideas in her head.

A hand reached down, tilting her head up. Soft thumbs brushed dust and grime off of her cheeks. Oh, how she wished her mum were here. "Violet Tyler," the woman scolded gently. "What have you been doing?"

Tommy and Ellen laughed as their mother licked her thumb to wipe the worst of it from her forehead. They should have seen her before the Doctor had practically beat her with a broom to get all the dust off. He'd threatened to hose her down like a dirty dog, but it wasn't like he'd been oh-so-much cleaner. That was before they'd come back into the park, and before her little trip under the coasters. "Hello." It was, unfortunately, the cleverest thing she could think to say.

Ellen tugged on her sleeve. "Do you want to ride the carousel with us? It's the last thing we're doing before we leave."

Wow. No one had ever asked her to play before.

Her hand slid into her pocket, and she grabbed the remaining tickets. Looking at them for a moment, she almost said yes. Except…she and the Doctor had things to do, bad guys to stop, and a boosted TARDIS to get back.

She handed the tickets to Ellen, who wrinkled her pointed, thin nose, making the freckles dance on her cheeks. "What're these for?" the other girl asked.

Violet smiled as sincerely as possible. "I think I'm all done for the day. Too much candy, maybe. But you should enjoy them. Can you ride the carousel an extra time for me?"

The twins' mother was looking around, probably for Violet's responsible adult. "You really should talk to your--"

Violet cut her off. "It's ok, I'm going to find the Doctor right now. You know how grownups are, always wandering off…" She tried to make light, but it didn't seem to be working.

The woman frowned. "Maybe we can help you find him."

Without thinking, Violet hugged Ellen, crushing her arms to her sides, the way the Doctor hugged her before bed. "Thanks for inviting me though. Maybe some other day." But the Doctor was all about moving on, so somehow she doubted there'd be another time. Imagine that… all the time in the world, and no second chances. It was depressing.

Before the woman could say anything further, Violet waved and took off.

Stupid disappearing TARDIS. She'd been kind of secretly looking forward to the carousel.

XYZ

Violet stopped near the casino and looked around. If you were the Doctor, where would you be?

Well, that was simple to answer—wherever the biggest ruckus was, usually. But as she listened to the ricketing coasters, twinkling carousel organ and the music from the bandstand, she had no idea where that would be.

Spinning around in a circle, Violet stopped herself. The Doctor did that when he was thinking…she'd better not pick up a habit like that. Besides, thinking about anything spinning made her belly do flip-flops.

"Violet!"

Maybe she could report herself as a lost child, and get help looking for the Doctor that way. Maybe she should climb up onto something (like the casino roof, for instance), and see what she could see. Maybe…

A hand grabbed onto her arm, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. "Violet," Ellen puffed. "I'm going to help you find your dad."

Taking in a deep breath, Violet was fully prepared to launch into an explanation as to the Doctor being the Doctor, but then she stopped. Not worth it. And getting into the intricacies of her relationship with the Doctor with someone who didn't know the long, turgid back-story would just… take forever. And she didn't like thinking about the shadow monster. "Uh, thanks. I think."

Ellen stood on her tip-toes, scanning the crowd. This is what Violet was talking about. If things were even fifty-percent fair, she'd be as tall as Ellen, who towered over her by a full head. Then she'd certainly see the Doctor, and she could tell him about the TARDIS.

Violet decided to press on. Taking Ellen's hand, she lead the way—which was a new and interesting position to be in. "I'm sure when we find him, he'll be huffing and puffing a great deal. I did run off without saying anything."

"My mother figured as much," Ellen informed with wisdom and pride. "Which is why she sent me to be sure that you get where you're going."

There was a buzzing in her ear, and the air seemed charged. Before Violet could even think about what it could mean, a string of lights on the far side of the lake popped, one by one. The display would have been spectacular, had it been intended.

Still, Violet thought as she changed direction, Ellen struggling to keep up (it was good to be on the other end of that, for a change), it was nice of the Doctor to send up a flair.

"Wait!" Violet didn't respond to her friend, she just continued on toward the sparking electrical cables. "Why're we running TOWARDS it?"

Cracking an insuppressible grin, Violet glanced back as they stumbled through the grass on the edge of the lake. "Because that's where the Doctor is! I'm almost certain of it." She figured she had an eighty-seven percent chance of being right, and a ninety-nine percent chance of meeting up with him again. If the Doctor wasn't where the action was, then he would be soon.

XYZ

There was a buzz in the air, followed by a series of snap-hiss sounds. The Doctor turned around to the last few light bulbs in the long chain explode. Dropping the crystal cable he'd been working on, the Doctor headed in the direction of the explosion, all of the pops having gone away from his current location. They might have been storing some sort of generator or other device in the zoo he was trying to break back into, but all the action was happening wherever that power was GOING to.

Sliding past two cement planters and an iron gate closing off access to the park's miniature trolley ride, then dodging the people who were trying to get AWAY from the sparks, the Doctor ducked over the potted tree, holding an arm over his head to shield against the flecks of power still raining down. That was what told him this wasn't a normal malfunction; something that wasn't electricity was being pushed through that cable. And whoever was doing it didn't have any care for who saw…which meant he had a limited amount of time to diffuse the situation.

The lights ran from the zoo to a miniature boat ride, around the children's boats and to an indoor attraction. Well, it wasn't much of an indoor attraction, it was just a more adult version of the children's ride; boats traveled on a wooden trough through a series of dioramas, in the dark. Where better to hide something futuristic, than in some fantasy display, inside an amusement park? He could have practically hidden the TARDIS in there, if only he'd have thought of it.

Coming around the back, he did see a maintenance door which was already slightly ajar, but then he'd be crawling around in the dark between displays, looking for the correct one, all the while not attracting attention. Ducking back around the front, he climbed over the waste-high iron fence, in front of the ticket taker, flashing the psychic paper.

An older woman looked scandalized when he cut in front of her, ducking right in the boat she'd been prepared to step into. "Amusement Park Commission," he announced, not entirely sure there was such a thing. "Just checking to be sure everything is working in here, after the electrical surge." The attendant stared blankly for a moment and the Doctor made a frantic gesture for him to hurry up. Finally, he released the break, and the Doctor was off.

The graveyard scene with the skeleton heads popping out of the ground was delightfully clever, though entirely not what he was looking for, the same with the cowboys being cooked in a pot by coyotes. Reaching his hands out, he grabbed onto the sides of the trough, trying to push the boat through faster. Due to the limited space between the sidewalls and the boat, all it did was create suction and slow the boat down still further.

Head slinking down, the Doctor let out a sigh. He always hated waiting.

A waterfall was around the next bend, lights turning it various colors. Overhead, there was a giant spider on a leaver that popped up and down, and then darkness. Pieces of string hung down, tickling his face, and he could imagine the frightened delight that Violet would have gotten from it all.

Where in the world had she run off to?

He went around another bend and into a small area lit with stars that were little more than holes punched in the black foil of the background, tiny planets hanging from miniscule threads glittering as they spun with the light breeze that constantly moved throughout the place.

Ahead, he heard a child's cry. It wasn't a gleeful cry of fright experienced in a controlled environment—it was a real, startled cry. "Let her go," he heard just barely, past rumbling of the waterfall behind him and the tinkling of some music box-like device providing background sounds for the stars. "Let her go, or I'M TELLING!" The last was so much louder and clearer, it was quite easy to tell who it was coming from.

Standing up in the boat, the Doctor launched himself over the front end and into the water, sloshing through the narrow tunnel as fast as he could.

There was another scream as he pressed onward, coming up to the next boat. Climbing in, two startled young lovers gasped as he went up and over them. "As you were!" he called back to them. It was hardly the tunnel of love, but he supposed when you were a teenager, a private snog was a private snog.

Coming on the next diorama, he didn't see any sign of trouble, so he pressed onward, dodging one more couple.

"Put her down!" a girl's voice ordered from up ahead. "You're not taking her with you!"

He should have known that if there were trouble to be had, he could count on Violet to find it.

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

Standard disclaimers. Thanks to krypto and Erica for beta help. Go read Erica's fic she's swell. Krypto has a drabble I keep telling him to post, before I break into his account and post it for him, the dirty, dirty thing. I'd have totally posted this shizzle last night, but I was too seepy.

Got the next part started… haazaa! And I have a plan! And if y'all don't protest too badly, ideas for a few more stories. I've also had next to no sleep, so I'm a bit funny in the head right now. I keep having weird waking dreams about dipping cookies in milky tan-colored coffee, like my little Italian grandmother used to do.

XYZ

Trolley Park Murders

Chapter 8

XYZ

"I don't think we should be doing this," Ellen whispered. "I'm only supposed to help you find your--"

Violet looked behind her, and Ellen took the hint and hushed. They continued to creep past the lines and towards the access door on the side of the ride. "We're looking for the Doctor, right?"

The older girl nodded. The day's fun was showing—her light green dress was rumpled and a few thin blond locks had fallen from her hair tie and were now hanging into her face.

Violet wished her hair were straighter. She decided to blame the Doctor for that as well. Life really was much easier when you knew whom to blame. Because really—that sonic screwdriver could do anything, right? Couldn't it just make her hair straighter?

"Well, wherever there's trouble, that's where the Doctor is." She smiled, gently tugging on Ellen's sleeve. Violet really did need to keep in mind that this wasn't everyone's cup of tea a few 'exciting' rides and most folks were done for the day. But she was actually having fun with her new friend, so she wanted to be as encouraging as possible. "We just need to find trouble, then BAM, we've found the Doctor." It was all very simple, really.

Looking around for anyone attempting to stop them, Violet climbed the metal steps and tried the door. It was locked.

Ellen sighed in relief. Obviously they couldn't go further, if the door was locked. "Can't we just wait somewhere sensible for him? What about the carousel? It's in the centre of the park. It's where all of the lost families meet."

Violet was already digging through her pocket. She had two pennies, a square screw (souvenir from the junk planet) a gumball and… there it was. The paperclip. Taking it out, she unfolded it. "In lieu of a sonic screwdriver," Violet announced proudly, harkening back to her first lesson from the Doctor, "a lock pick is your best friend."

She poked and poked until the inside mechanism of the door caught, then she pushed on it until it clicked. These old locks were a piece of cake, it had only taken her an afternoon of instruction to make them open; it was the newer ones she was still having trouble with. Anything cleverer than a house lock was too difficult—the types of electric hybrids that were on the TARDIS were darned-near impossible. "We can't wait someplace sensible, because he's never going to be some place sensible. He's the Doctor."

Dashing up the steps, Violet waited until Ellen had followed, then closed the door. It got far too dark, so she left it open just a crack. The sparking wires and the other lights from the park gave just enough light to let them know where to step.

Poking around in the dark, Ellen grabbed Violet's hand. "Why do you keep calling him that? Isn't he your dad?"

Violet shrugged. She tried not to think too hard about it. "He's…just the Doctor. I don't know." That's what he'd said, when they first met. He said his name was the Doctor, and he'd asked who she was. So he was the Doctor.

Statistically speaking (she did love maths), their best odds for finding what they were looking for was to walk uphill, Violet was thinking. Keeping one hand on the wall, they walked on the narrow side of the trough. Water rushed beneath them. It wasn't a powerful current, but it was a few feet deep and probably moving fast enough to knock a few lightweights such as themselves clear off their footing, which made the acrobatics seem all that much more appealing.

Ellen's steps were far more cautious, but her legs were longer, so she managed to keep an even pace. Her hand was still wrapped around Violet's. "And why is he called that?"

The girl knew that her mother hadn't seemed to like this 'Doctor' fellow very much. He seemed very neglectful as far as parents went. Her mother had mentioned that she thought the man (who seemed so very young, but whose eyebrows arched downward, like an old man lost in thought) must have thought she was far older than she actually was, with all the 'freedom' he allowed. Ellen's mother saw this as tantamount to neglect, or so she'd overheard when her parents were talking at lunch.

Violet didn't seem like the second-graders at her school. They were babies. Well, to a fourth-grader like her, at any rate. Ellen could vouch—Violet wasn't a baby at all.

Coming to a lit display of ghostly sheets twirling around a farmhouse, Violet stopped, waiting in the dark for a boat to pass, and then skipped across it, urging Ellen to follow. When they were once again in a dark bit of tunnel, Violet sighed. "Cos that's what he's called. The Doctor. Everybody's got to have a name." she was unfortunate enough to have been named after a plant. The Doctor really might have just gotten the short end of the naming stick too.

"Mum just said he's the Doctor. So I don't think there's anything more to it. They used to travel together." Sort of like how she and the Doctor were traveling together now, but without homework. At least she hoped the Doctor hadn't made her mum do bookwork.

Ellen frowned, thinking. She knew the things adults talked about, things she wasn't supposed to know about yet. But she had a fairly clear idea of where Violet had come from, if her mother and this 'Doctor' merely 'traveled' together without any sort of rings or vows being exchanged. She felt a strange sense of pity for the younger girl that had never been there before.

The world was not a kind place to children born into such situations. Ellen was young, but she wasn't stupid. Perhaps the constant traveling that Violet spoke of worked to their advantage. If they were not in any place for too long, then they weren't around long enough for the talk to start.

Violet stopped at the edge of the tunnel, just before another display. Ellen almost tripped over her. Before she could fall into the water, her friend grabbed her, pulling her back to where she could get her hands on a wooden beam. She honestly couldn't believe she hadn't fallen into the wide, rushing trench.

"Many thanks," she whispered. Violet didn't say anything; she just stared intently around the corner at something Ellen herself couldn't see...she could only barely hear eerie space sounds coming from the display and saw some flickering lights. Violet seemed to be eyeing up the situation, probably concocting some new plan that'd get them even further into trouble. Her new friend was certainly not like the baby second years from her school.

Violet turned back, leaning her head in towards Ellen's so she could speak as quietly as possible and still be heard. "This is so not good," she reported. "Nasty old space ship, he's recharging it from somewhere. That's why the lights blew. Something's smoking, so there's probably an electrical fire, which is not good." Her face twisted in disgust. "There're PEOPLE in here! And he's going to let the place catch fire!"

Drawing in a few steadying breaths, Violet mustered up her courage. "You can stay here if you want. But I have to try to disconnect the power cable. Before HE escapes, or this place catches on fire. IF the Doctor ever feels like joining this festival of not-good, let him know… well, let him know that our blue box is missing. Maybe he'll know what to make of it, because I don't."

Without waiting, Violet cautiously took a step forward, pausing and waiting for the next opportune moment.

Ellen could certainly stay here. She had a firm handle on a wooden support beam, so she wouldn't fall and be pulled under in the small bit of rushing water. It'd be perfectly reasonable to wait for Violet's Doctor. It was definitely the most mature and grownup thing to do.

Of course, she HAD followed her friend INTO this place, which hadn't been the smartest idea. She might as well follow through with stupidity… if it was that. "I'm coming with you," Ellen whispered, taking a few steps forward, closer to Violet.

Violet turned back, pleased that she had someone to get into trouble with. Musta been why the Doctor kept dumb humans and other not-smart creatures around. That, and monologing at no-one made you crazy. Monologing at a dumb human made you sound smart. "Alright. I'm gunna get up there, see what I can do about the cable." She pointed at the electrical cable running from the outside wall to the space ship and aliens diorama on the other side. "Keep a look out for a guy with creepy weird eyes, or the Doctor."

Lookouts were important. She'd like to find out BEFORE she fell into the water with the big fat electrical cable (which felt weirdly alive, at least to her over-active imagination) and turned herself into a shriveled-up carbonized piece of bacon like Uncle Mickey always made.

Ellen nodded, and Violet gave one last look around. She didn't feel good inside that she couldn't see Captain Crazy (the Doctor had called him a marshal of some kind, but to her, he'd always be Captain Crazy—it was the eyes). Trying to stay out of the focused lights adding color and shadow to the odd display, Violet waited until one more boat passed, then dashed out of access tunnel and began climbing up the support beams. Most were vertical, so she had to tug herself up quite hard, and she could feel the dirt and splinters scraping at her already scratched hands, but she kept going.

There was something wrong with that electrical cable. Other than it being shoddy early 20th century technology. Stuff on the TARDIS broke (like every fifteen minutes or so), but never like the sparks she'd seen outside, or what she felt going through it. All she knew was that she had to do something, the black paint at the roof of the tunnel was starting to smell with burning.

This…man…alien…whatever he was really didn't care who he hurt. Well, the pile of dead bodies should have tipped her off to that. He'd gone on and on about justice and how the Doctor was horrible, but at least the Doctor tried to help. She was beginning to see that there was no black and white; good guys and bad guys weren't absolute, but knowing who was trying to help others, and knowing who was hurting others to help himself made it a lot easier to see whose side to be on for the moment. The Doctor might have destroyed all the Time Lords, but it was the only way to help. This fellow was doing all of this to help whom? She doubted it was saving the universe.

Her mum had said she was so proud of Violet, that she could see the "big picture," and look past the moment. But there were things bigger than the big picture, and she wondered if she and the Doctor were the only ones who could see it.

It wasn't that far up, from the side of the trough to the ceiling it was only about six feet; just large enough for a service worker to get through. But they were back to the short thing again. Backside pressed against one support beam, she jammed her feet against another, ending up in a kind of sitting position. See, there was a use to all those trees she'd climbed and all those clothes she'd ruined, and all the grey hairs she'd given her gran every time they went to the park.

Everything meant something, she supposed. She'd had to leave her mum so she could meet the Doctor, so that hadn't been for nothing. She'd climbed all those trees for something, and she'd wandered away from the Doctor for something today too. Maybe she should just listen to the part of her that told her there was something wrong with this cable, or the part of her that felt the earth spin.

Or she could run around puking all the time. Seriously. Violet wrapped her hands around the cable, searching for some way to disconnect it from where it met up with the wall. Maybe it was like sticking an extension cord into another extension cord, and she could find some way to pull it free on her end? Whatever was going into that ugly tin ship was not right, and that she'd listen to.

Behind her, Ellen screamed.

Violet lost her footing and slid down between the two by fours, spinning around to see Captain Crazy with his arm around Ellen's neck. There was nothing good about this, and the seriousness of the situation burned in her mind as possibilities began to fold backward and forward faster than she could keep up. "Let her go," she commanded, as if that'd somehow work.

The man had long legs, and managed to straddle the furrow and cross it without any effort. "The Doctor does start them young, doesn't he?"

Another boat came floating by, an older couple. Violet winced as she did it, but she stepped into the boat in front of them, then onto the other side as Captain Crazy yanked Ellen further back into the display. "Let her go, or I'm TELLING." She hadn't quite figured out the logistics of that yet, but she'd figure it out. Oh what she wouldn't give for a decent piece of sonic equipment (that actually functioned!) right about now.

The boat continued on, and the couple seemed amused, as if this were all part of the show. "They change it a little every year," the old man muttered.

The Doctor was right about one thing—people really didn't see what they didn't want to.

Violet also dug further into the tufts of paper Mache Martian landscape, until she caught a glimpse of something moving a bit further down the tunnel. It was about time!

The craft looked like a giant rusty metal drum with a bullet-shaped rim. It was turned diagonal in the room, probably to allow enough space for it. Or to aid in lift-off. A window slid back, showing three seats.

Ellen let out another yelp as he hoisted her off the ground, still using her as a shield (as if Violet were somehow armed). He had one foot in the ship, and she knew she had to do something. She needed to do something about the cable overhead, as the smell was getting worse, but she needed to do something for Ellen.

Violet held her hands up and began backing away from the ship, keeping the Doctor in her sight. He had stopped in the tunnel just beyond the opening for the display. Her back hit the thin wooden wall. This place was old, the wood was dry. It would be an amazing fire if they didn't wrap this up. "Just let my friend go, alright? She was trying to help me get un-lost. That's all."

She dared to take a step forward. Seemed like an OK thing to do, in that weird, riding on some else's' instinct sort of way.

He hoisted Ellen up just a bit further, and it was then that she saw the boxy gun-like device. "Hey! Enough with that. I know what you are now. I know you're like him. And for that, you'll both burn."

Oh, she didn't even want to find out what the heck he was talking about. She liked chocolate, ignorance and ponies. Right now she'd like to take ignorance for two hundred, please. "Ok, that's OK and everything, but can we let her go? She's completely normal, and I just met her today, and it's not her fault her mum asked her to help me get un-lost. Alright? If you want me to ride in your ugly ship, I will." And Violet knew a thing about ugly. There was an ugly pewter urn of a broken TARDIS sitting in the cargo space of their lost ship. That thing was unattractive on the outside, and the inside was very austere and proper. The two didn't belong together, and that made it even weirder looking.

This whole time, Captain Crazy had been watching her go on and on the Doctor had slid up the other side of the display. She could see his shoes sticking out under the raised bit of the ship. The man's back was to the Doctor, but she had a feeling that he was going to need a distraction.

She could only think of one thing.

"So what's the Doctor done? I mean, he's rude and sometimes a little mean, but I'd like to know what he's done." One foot slid forward, and she began transferring her weight.

The marshal got his other leg into the ship. "He brought chaos to our world. That's what he's done."

Holding up her hands, Violet slid her other foot forward cautiously. "I'm just a little kid. You'll have to be more explicit." Darn it. She hadn't meant to say explicit, it had just come out. Why couldn't she use smaller words?

The marshal gave a bitter laugh. This was a man who really didn't like Time Lords. He seemed to have mixed up his obsession with order and his obsession with Time Lords. "Your kind are hatched fully grown, knowing everything they need to get started. What happened to you? Were you hatched too early, and you only have half a brain about you?"

Violet saw the Doctor climbing up the other side of the ship slowly. He gestured for her to do more. She couldn't think of anything else particularly clever, so she tried to make her imagination be for something.

Closing her eyes, she tried to drown out the rush of the water and the buzz of the electricity over head, the onlookers in the boats that slid past and Ellen's struggling grunts. She focused on her feet, and the feeling of the ground this building was connected to. It was grinding away beneath her, the plates moving, everything shifting as it spun like a top so fast, and if it stopped, she'd be thrown off. It spun, and spun, slingshotting around the sun like an unraveled yo-yo being swung overhead by a frustrated child. Everything was in motion, in a set orbit around everything else, but it wasn't mechanical, like the moving solar system model in her classroom. Everything moved freely, artfully, like calligraphy brush strokes. They only moved in an orchestrated manner because they chose to.

Everything spun outward as the universe expanded. She saw it go backwards in her mind. From quasars and black holes and planets and her very own sun, all the way back to a mustard seed, then nothingness.

And it made her sick.

Opening her eyes, she took two giant steps forward and vomited right on the crazy man's shoe.

Before her stomach was even empty, the Doctor had his arm around Captain Crazy's neck, knocking the gun away.

She wiped the tears from her eyes as she looked up. The whole area was backlit an evil red. There was something cold and almost demonic about the Doctor's hardened features as he tightened his grip. He didn't have to say anything. She knew what he'd do if the marshal did not comply.

A second later, Ellen slipped from his grasp. Violet tried to grab her, but they both ended up on the wooden ground together, crushing a bit of the paper landscape. Her friend was sniffling and gasping as she tried to get her emotions under control. Color rose to the child's pale cheeks now that she was immediately out of danger. Violet hugged her, squeezing on her friend for comfort. "I'm sorry."

And she was sorry. This certainly wasn't how she'd wanted things to turn out. And if she'd have known that her friend would be in such immediate danger, she'd have simply thanked Ellen for the offer to help her find the Doctor, and continued on alone.

Violet was also sorry that all of this wasn't over for any of them. She didn't have time to explain or apologize further for the insanity she'd dragged Ellen into.

A moment later, all hell broke loose.

TBC.


	9. Chapter 9

The Doctor gave Violet the 'distraction would be nice,' nod, and she closed her eyes. He couldn't imagine what she was doing, but neither could the marshal. His focus was entirely on her, that stubbled shovel jaw locking as he tried to figure out what the girl was about now. That small bit of distraction let the Doctor get better footing on the edge of the cockpit.

Few seconds later, her stomach convulsed and she staggered forward a few steps, and lost lunch right on the marshal's worn leather shoe. Vomiting on command was a strange but useful trick, he thought as his arm clasped around the marshal's thin, wiry neck. He hadn't had all the pieces of the puzzle, but now things were starting to fall into place. This whole affair hadn't necessarily been targeted toward the Doctor. However, the marshal, this "Parker Green" was to be the sole beneficiary of anything that happened here.

The Doctor squeezed tighter, trying to cut off blood flow to the alien's head, which'd be a lot quicker than suffocating him into unconsciousness.

The girl slid to the ground, landing on top of Violet from what the Doctor could see. Unfortunately, he concentrated on them just a second too long, and the marshal threw his entire weight away from the cockpit of the short-range schooner.

His head snapped off a sharp wooden sun, and he could feel it ripping into his flesh until it swung upward on the wire to which it was attached, and he headed into the other direction. They plummeted downward, the short few feet between them and another solid object being crossed in what felt like an eternity. Mostly because he knew this was going to hurt.

Trying to keep his hold on the headlock, the Doctor gritted his teeth as the back of his head slammed into the plaster wall, crashing through the thin backing slats which tore at his back as he spanned that final bit of distance to the ground. Air rushed out of his lungs, but the Doctor managed to tighten his grip.

Any fear he had about blacking out was put to rest when the ceiling above them ignited in a blinding white spark.

XYZ

A second before all hell broke loose, Violet rolled to the left as hard as she could, taking Ellen with her against the back wall, away from the pointy wooden sun that came flying their way as the marshal managed to turn the tables and dove over the other side of the ship, driving himself and the Doctor through the thin sidewall.

The fat but short ship was in the way, she couldn't see what had happened, but she knew the Doctor would be feeling that one tomorrow.

The pointy wisps circling the sun swung away from them when the Doctor's head hit it, but when it came back again, the line holding it to the ceiling snapped. It spun like a circular saw as it slammed into the floor where Violet and Ellen had been just a second before, the whole sun sticking upright out of the floor, vibrating back and forth like an arrow that had hit its mark. She didn't want to think about how that could have been them—she couldn't think about it, right now she needed to worry about DOING.

Scooting her legs up to her chest, away from splinters and sparks that were now raining down, she managed to pull Ellen's skirts away from it. Fortunately Ellen got her wits about her quickly enough and pressed her back to the wall and away from the debris. They hadn't been killed by the display, but now effectively trapped as the fire caught in the ceiling at the front of the small stage, right above screaming boat passengers.

Keeping her back to the plaster wall, Violet slid to a standing position, waiting for the debris to stop falling. It didn't necessarily stop, but it did slow, and she dodged toward the ship, kicking the smoldering 'landscape' away from her. Keeping close to the ship, she crouched a bit, letting its cylindrical exterior shield her from the small flaming bits.

The air wreaked of burnt paint, wood and melting rubber. Sounds of struggle on the other side of the ship broke through the constant buzzing of the overtaxed cabling.

Ellen squealed as a big pieces came down a few feet from Violet. All that Violet could do is look back reassuringly. Completely NOT how she'd wanted this adventure to play out. Ok, she'd spot the Doctor one on attempting to keep her safe by boring her to death.

She couldn't see the people, but she could hear them abandoning the boats, splashing through the tunnel to an exit she couldn't see. She was glad they had some sense, and was surprised by her thought that they might not be sensible.

Finding where the melting, sparking power cable met up with an access hatch on the ship, Violet began looking for some way to disconnect it. "How do I get it to stop? Tell me how to shut it off." She wasn't just worried about the failing cable, she was now quite worried about what this unbridled energy was doing to the ship. Stuff that wasn't properly grounded, or had absorbed too much energy blew up all the time on the TARDIS. This might be like that. Actually the whole thing was giving her a headache, and she felt like that was important.

Violet found a lever that might release the rigged adapter on the wiring to the ship. It was heavy, and wasn't going anywhere, but she continued struggling with it, perspiration collecting around her forehead and mouth. She wasn't so sure it was entirely from the building, flashing heat.

The Doctor was groaning, but he didn't hear any more shifting and struggling on the other side of the ship. Maybe he'd be able to help her with this. "You can't disconnect it from there!" He'd said it like he knew exactly what she was trying to do.

She pulled her hands away, quickly. "Well?"

The Doctor took a few more deep breaths. He really did sound like he had his own problems to worry about. "You have to go to the source. It's the zoo house. If you disconnect it from here, the energy that's already in the ship will have no place to go, and the energy coming out of the cable will just keep coming. I don't know what he's done, but it's not boring old electricity!" This last was punctuated with a few more grunts, a shifting and tearing of wood, and a squelch of discomfort coming from the Doctor. "Come here. Take this!"

Holding an arm above her head to shield from the sparks, she crossed beneath the cable, kicking more burning set dressing and around to where the Doctor was still struggling with Captain Crazy.

The Doctor's arm was wrapped around Captain Crazy's neck, his arms trembling with the effort he was putting into the headlock. For his part, the victim of said headlock was red-faced, it looked almost demonic with the swiveling eyes and the peppery grey hair. They were half inside the wall, and half on the little stage this was all playing out upon. It looked so…odd, odder than a canister of a space ship inside a boat ride, and odder than traveling through time and space.

Violet froze there, watching, until the Doctor gestured with his head for her to come closer. It was then that she saw all the cuts and scratches on his face, and the blood collecting in his hair. He looked like her uncle and mum after a business trip, and she knew he'd feel that one tomorrow too. "I think it's in his front pocket. Sonic screwdriver. Do whatever you have to, just get in there and disconnect whatever this thing's hooked up to."

She didn't feel all that great about it, considering the creepy guy was still struggling, whacking at the Doctor's head, clawing for something to hurl at either of them. But she had to do what had to be done. Sometimes, thinking too much could get you into trouble, she decided, plunging her hand impulsively into the coat and fumbling for the opening of the pocket. A second later she produced the sonic screwdriver. Flipping a switch to make sure it was functional, the tip lit up blue.

Violet stopped for a moment, staring at it. "The TARDIS is missing," she said absently, still transfixed by the little blue arc of energy that signified an active unit. "It's why I ran off. Do ya think…"

The Doctor looked down at his captive, his cheeks still puffing with strain. There was an intense and deadly look on his eyes. "That's why you needed us busy for a few hours," he ground out. "If he's using the TARDIS to power this thing, he's got a third-party generator hooked up to it. Basically, he's mounting a pathetic attack against the ship and draining the spill-off from the defensive measures. It'd be brilliant if it weren't for the whole killing us all bit of it."

He paused a moment, managing to wrap a leg around the waste of the wiry man, getting just a bit more control. She was pretty a normal guy should have been extremely passed out by now. This was, on the whole, not going well. "Ok," The Doctor continued. "Don't TOUCH the TARDIS. Don't go within five feet of it, or you're going to get zapped too. I don't care what you do, but shut down the other unit."

Violet nodded, but hesitated, looking back in the direction of her friend. 

"GO," he ordered. "Take her with you. DON'T step in the water."

Snapping back to reality, she ducked around the ship, under the sparks and looked at the ceiling. It had been shoddy quarter-inch wood, and it looked like everything that was going to fall had done so. Sure the joist beams were starting to catch, but it was as clear of a path as it was going to be. Picking up the singed edges of her skirt, she traversed the debris. There was too much stuff on the floor, mostly burnt off and crumpled, but catching her skirt on fire would be BAD at this point.

Dashing across the short (but so obstacle-laden) distance, she reached down to her huddling friend grabbed Ellen's hand. When Ellen picked up her head up, she instantly began coughing, the filter of her skirts no longer there to protect.

Best solution was out and away, as quickly as possible, so she pulled Ellen to the small walkway at the edge of the wooden trough. "Come on. We haveta go."

A thought struck her—she should be coughing herself, shouldn't she? Something else for later. The Doctor hadn't said much of anything regarding himself in her time with him, but today he'd just been a veritable bouquet of information she'd never wanted to know.

The air cleared in the tunnel, which was a relief. Violet grabbed hold of an abandoned boat to use it as a wobbly bridge across the water.

Looking back, she saw that Ellen was breathing better, even if she looked like she'd been through the wringer. Her dress was torn, her hair was an undone tangled mess and she was grey and dirty with smoke. It hadn't been bad, they'd had pretty decent visibility, but it had clung to both of them. "I am sorry," Violet offered.

Ellen didn't respond. She was concentrating on her footing, perhaps too intently. Violet could avoid with the best of them. She knew it when she saw it.

XYZ

The Doctor thought she'd never leave. First off, it'd be nice if the building didn't burn down around him.

He closed his eyes, trying to steady himself and tighten his grip. Nothing seemed to be working. They were at a stalemate, which was really not good considering this had no possible way of ending well.

His head had been bashed seven ways to Sunday, his coat that he liked very much had been punctured by crashing through the mortar and slats (not to mention the part where they stabbed and scraped him), and there was something jabbing his bottom that he was certain did not belong there. So he was well within his rights to be just a tad on the drained side at the moment.

The props had been paper and glue, they'd burned off fairly quickly. The rest of the wood, however, was doing a nice slow burn, mostly the roof. The sparks continued, and he hoped he'd done the right thing (as if he had so many choices) in sending Violet off to stop the over fueling of this short-ranger.

Not loosening his grip, the Doctor proposed a solution. "Lets say we forget the part where you killed four people and took a little girl hostage, and get to the part where we hold off on the hostilities for a moment, and get out of here?" Besides, there were still so many questions that required answers. A lot of blanks had been filled, and the Doctor was certain he had the gist of this story, but just for grins, he'd like to hear it from the horse's mouth, to mix metaphors.

The marshal stopped his struggling, and the Doctor eased up on the hold. Even the visibly insane could be reasonable, when the ceiling above them was on fire. "I'm going to let up, and we're going to take it from there." That really was about the sum total of the plan right now. The ceiling supports weren't all that thick; this was a glorified winding shack. It wouldn't take much for the short lapping flames of the smoking electrical fire to eat through.

The Doctor let go still further, giving the man enough room to manuver to his knees. And it looked like all was going well, suntanned hands pressed to the floor, and the marshal began to slide one leg under the other.

Then something felt wrong.


	10. Chapter 10

Standard disclaimers. And such. Thanks to Krypto for the beta. Sorry to Erica for having postitus : )

XYZ

Trolley Park Murders

Chapter 10

XYZ

They were only one more display away from the service entrance they'd come in though, but Violet heard men's voices up ahead. Probably people trying to stop the place burning to the ground, which was all well and good she'd kind of like it if the only person who could run the TARDIS made it out alive and preferably in one piece. However, her own game was up if someone tried to have a bright idea and 'rescue' her.

She halted and Ellen almost ran into her. "What?" the other girl asked. At least Ellen was talking to her now, Violet thought. Even if she did sound rather displeased with the whole situation.

Violet looked around for some inspiration. She had a sonic screwdriver, a few pennies, a square screw…

Backing up a few paces to put some more distance between herself and the approaching men, she found it. Outside fair lights peeking through the wood. She kicked it and it didn't give. Instantly she began searching for the setting that had destroyed all the appliances in the kitchen. "If we're caught, they're going to 'rescue' us. If they rescue us, something even worse is going to happen when that thing explodes."

Ellen sighed, a wheeze still evident in her breath. "I think we should tell a grownup. They can help us."

The screwdriver hummed and she felt the nails on the outside backing away. That was what had destroyed everything—electricity and magnets aren't the best of friends in some circumstances. "Who's going to believe us? That that stupid looking spaceship is a REAL spaceship, and it's leaching power off of MY spaceship so that it can escape?" When she said it out loud, it even sounded stupid to her. Children's overactive imaginations and all that.

The nails popped out of the wood and she pushed on it, knocking the board out of place. She jumped out. It was about four feet to the ground, which seemed like a great distance considering she wasn't that tall yet herself. She was in a partially enclosed section with tall grass. The ride snaked around them.

Ellen looked down at her, then back at the tunnel, towards the approaching men.

"You can stay if you want," Violet assured her. She was disappointed, but she knew she'd completely botched this up. "They'll get you back to your mum. But I have to keep going." She'd never see Ellen again if she went with those people, but it still hurt.

Clenching her eyes shut, Ellen jumped.

Violet couldn't help it, she grinned. "Great." She took Ellen's hand and they began dashing their way through the support beams, looking for a less populated path. "Now we need to get past the fire brigade, the gathering crowds, anyone else trying to stop us, and after that…" She shrugged. They'd figure that out when they got there.

XYZ

Annnnnd just to top things off, by the time the Doctor got to his feet, there was a gun in his face. "That's enough," the marshal ground out, the long-term strangulation only appearing to have a minimum effect on his vocal cords. Or his ability to toss the Doctor.

He'd known about the modification to the eyes to see in low light. Obviously he'd missed the lung and artery upgrade that had happened when he wasn't looking.

The Doctor's hands rose slowly. "The thing I'm dying to know is… where'd you get it? That thing isn't even going to be thought up for another hundred years, much less manufactured." Keeping the enemy talking was somewhere in the 'don't get yourself killed' handbook, somewhere in the low-thirties, he'd wager.

The sonic weapon never wavered from in front of the Doctor's face. "How the hell should I know? Plazus traded parts with some captain running from his former employers before I even got here."

He said nothing further, but the Doctor could hear the distinct sounds of 'or I'd have arrested him too' somewhere in there. "And if I ever see Captain Jack again, I'll punch him in the gut for you," the Doctor said very calmly. And maybe kick him in the side as well, but that'd be done strictly for the Doctor's own pleasure.

There was the instinctive need to shove his hands into his pockets. It was a habit that seemed to follow him through most of his regenerations. Especially when he was thinking. Well, it wasn't necessarily thinking… he thought all the time. But there eventually came a time when he had to pick through all those processes running in the background, pull out pertinent threads and string them into something coherent and linier enough to be understood by a lower species.

"If I may," the Doctor began. "Plazus, whom I think we can agree is a bottom-feeder, sold us out (if I remember correctly) when my companions and myself were attempting to escape from your lovely prison satellite, where we were (wrongly, I might add) incarcerated. We still got away, but in the process two guards needlessly died, and I'm assuming Plazus escaped."

Surprisingly, the Doctor wasn't interrupted, so he drew in another breath of toxic smoking air and continued on, slowly lowering his hands, but picking up the pace with his tale. "I thought he did it just because he's a bottom-feeder, but it turns out he's coming back to his wife and kids—which makes him slightly less despicable I might add. Of course, he still has, on Earth, the shipment he's been sent up for. Convenient I know. You enter the picture quite some time later, no doubt doing the whole bounty hunter thing. You and your pals. That is a four-seater. Not quite clear on why you killed your other two companions, but we'll come back to that."

After seeing the rust marks on the ship—metal which should not have been capable of oxidizing—the Doctor knew the ship had been hit with some sort of crude sonic weapon. The Captain Jack angle just made the rest of it fit. Plazus shoots it down (or shoots it when it's already on the ground) so they can't take him back, they spend a year babysitting him, planning to hijack the ship of the next person who lands seeking to deal with Plazus' stolen parts.

Plazus was probably going to tell the Doctor what was up, so he had to go. Maybe the other correctional officers didn't like the way their buddy was playing it, and he'd shot 'em. Either way, this guy was really, really nuts. Which begged for one more question to be answered.

Slowly sliding his hands into his pockets, the Doctor asked, "The only thing I can't figure out…why am I still alive?"

The marshal's hand tightened on the gun. He lowered it just a bit, smiling at the Doctor with the gruesome grin of a man who enjoyed awful things. "Trust me. Once your part is done, you and your little friend will get what's been due to you for some time now." His sense of justice was warped, that was for certain. Perhaps he'd been unprepared for the sun on this planet, his people being from the dead of space. Perhaps the heat and the sun had driven him mad.

When the Doctor's face registered no recognition, the marshal explained it very simply, as if the Doctor were the lower species: "I needed SOMEONE to turn off the generator."

"Ahh," mused the Doctor.

XYZ

They both reeked of smoke and it was hard to miss two dirty little girls in a sea of people wearing their Sunday's best. Violet had managed to find a path around the roller coasters and the children's' rides, but they had to reenter the main thoroughfare in order to cross to the other side of the lake.

The crowd that had gathered outside was a bit distracted, however, when part of the boat ride came loose and water began spilling out. It seemed to be just before where the canister-shaped ship was stashed, and Violet had a pretty good feeling that help WASN'T quite as on the way as they thought it was for the Doctor.

Looking both ways, Violet bent just a bit, trying to make herself even smaller, then grabbed Ellen's hand and dashed towards the bridge. There were still more onlookers trying to cross towards them, and it was tricky dodging them all, but they weren't looking at the two girls—they were looking at the beginnings of flames shooting off the roof of the ride.

They got to the other side, and Ellen stopped, looking over towards the carousel. "My family."

Violet saw them too. It was pretty evident that Ellen's father was quite interested in the goings-on across the lake, and her mother was scanning the passers by, afraid to leave the pre-determined meeting place, and also too afraid not to. "You… shouldn't worry your mum," Violet muttered. "I…if my mum was here, I wouldn't want to worry her." Or her gran. Her gran would get out the wooden spoon, if she started worrying people.

Ellen looked down at her, and then to her mother, indecision suddenly creasing her forehead.

Violet didn't understand why. If her mum was there, and worried, Violet would move heaven and earth to let her mum know she was ok. She tried to give her friend an out. "I have to go now. It's up to you, but I have to go."

Without saying another word, Violet dropped her friend's hand and continued on. She went about ten paces and turned around. Ellen's thin, straight locks were blowing across her face as the girl stood there, still undecided.

Knowing that ultimately, it was the kindest thing to do, Violet waved one last time and turned back around, setting off in a dead run. It might have been a kindness, but the girls still felt lousy doing it.

XYZ

The rubber had burned entirely off of the sparking cable traveling from the TARDIS to the ship, powering it past capacity. It ran across what was left of the ceiling, up until the roof fell, hitting the trough and continuing on through. The sound of cracking wet wood was swallowed by the rushing of water hitting the grass outside.

It was only was only by a miracle that the glowing bare copper wire had caught on a stable piece of sidewall, and now rested preciously about a foot over the boats that fallen through the broken bottom.

Four men in shirtsleeves stopped about four yards from the diorama opening, unable to proceed due to the gaping hole in the narrow tunnel.

The marshal glanced toward the distraction, but the Doctor didn't act until another piece of burning debris, a thin scrap of flaming quarter-inch wood drifted down and the marshal pulled his dark green sleeve away.

Launching himself onto the utility ladder, the Doctor tore his hands out of his pockets, one arm knocking the sonic blaster away, but not out of the marshal's hand. Getting the thing as close to the marshal's beady mechanical eyes as possible with the sonic staple remover, he hoped desperately that he'd really managed to reconnect the computer correctly in the dark.

He hadn't dared to give it to Violet for that very reason; it might not have been the dampening fields before, the thing might just flat-out not work. Better that he give her the screwdriver, and she have a device that she can kill herself with than a device that could potentially get her killed.

As the marshal's head snapped back to see what this new assault was, the

Doctor pressed the single control mechanism and hoped for the best… and that the third setting would do something spectacular. Besides knock doors off of hinges.

XYZ

Violet had never gotten to see any of the actual ANIMALS in the zoo. The posters outside promised exotic tigers and long-tusked elephants, and she'd wanted to see them all. Even if she'd already seen them at the zoo back home. Maybe they were different in this dimension. She didn't know. But she wanted to see them.

The animals inside were making quite a noise by the time she got to the iron gates. The hole in the wall out back appeared to have gone unnoticed, as of yet. Especially since the park workers had so much else to worry about at the moment, brush had caught on fire along the melting cable, the thousands of gallons of water circulating through the covered boat ride were draining out onto the grass, and lights were now flickering all over the park, sending people into a panic.

Sheer and utter chaos.

Meaning she only had to wait until everyone was paying attention to the burning begonias outside the zoo gates, and she got through without a ticket for the zoo, which happened to be closed, due to the workers' diverted attentions.

The front door, a heavy steel thing with a painted jungle scene, was locked. Great. Now she had to remember which setting was the one that was good for locks. The Doctor made it look so easy. She had managed to kill appliances destroy toast with the sonic screwdriver.

Hoping for the best, she flipped it to a setting that SOUNDED familiar and let it rip. A whine, a snap-hiss and a small puff of smoke later, and the door unlocked. Inside was a long hall with cages on either side, each was stark, cement and 'all business,' save for hay and food littering them. Most didn't contain animals, but it pleased her to know that giraffes looked the same in this universe.

The other animals appeared to be in holding pens behind the cement walls. She could hear trainers attempting to calm them down, sometimes through means that Violet found rather harsh.

Wincing at the distant crack of a whip, Violet rushed to the other side of the hall, and three doors. The one directly in front of her lead outside, the one to the right probably lead back to the empty room where they'd already spent the better part of an afternoon. She'd already looked through the hole in the cement wall, and had seen nothing amiss with the space, other than more boxes being dumped than before. The door with no handle was still locked, and seemed like a lousy way to enter the building, so she'd gone around front and had tried the direct approach.

There was only one remaining direction—left. A buzz and a snap-hiss later, this door was opened, and she was left with a claustrophobic dark hallway. The door slammed shut behind her, but not latching. It bounced against the door frame several times, and Violet thought for sure she'd be found out.

However, the door closing showed her one thing: it wasn't as dark in here as she'd previously thought. Not with the unnatural blue light streaming from beneath the miniscule crack of the door at the end of the hall.

Violet had found the missing TARDIS. Now all she needed to do was disconnect the malicious generators.

She was beginning to hate this constant 'trial by fire' stuff.

TBC


	11. Chapter 11

Standard disclaimers. Thanks to Krypto for betaing most of it. The rest is unbeta'd because I have ants in my pants, and a serious case of postitus that the dermatologist hasn't been able to clear up.

XYZ

Trolley Park Murders

Chapter 11

XYZ

Pressing the switch, the Doctor hoped for the best.

He had no idea what happened, but the marshal let out a cry of pain, swatting the Doctor away like he didn't matter. Legs clipping against the side of the cockpit, he managed to keep his balance, mostly by grabbing onto his opponent's lapel.

Ducking another flailing arm, the Doctor just barely escaped the sonic blaster as it went off, scorching the wall beside him as the marshal groaned in pain and flailed blindly. Oh, that had worked, alright.

One more explosion from the gun, and the Doctor ducked the burning bits of ceiling that had come down. It was hot and smoky, visibility was nil, and even he had to breathe sometime…

Throwing the entire weight behind it, the Doctor crouched then sprung upward. His shoulder hit the marshal squarely in the chest, his elbow digging into a hard stomach. It was his turn to initiate freefall, as they went over the other side of the ship.

A ceiling beam, having been assaulted by the gun and by the fire, snapped, crashing down into the cockpit where they'd just been, something the Doctor only registered in the back of his mind as they came down. He had a millisecond to roll himself away from the marshal as their journey came to a very abrupt halt.

Hitting a patch of floor littered with splinters of burning wood, the Doctor began slapping the shoulder of his jacket, trying to put the fire out. He liked this jacket, thank-you-very-much.

The flame extinguished, the Doctor looked to his foe, wincing as he did so. "That really, REALLY has to hurt." He prodded the wound on the rear of his skull as he examined the very dead man who was very impaled from stem to stern upon the jagged edges of the painted wooden sun that had clipped the Doctor in the back of the head earlier.

Scrambling to his feet, the Doctor noted that he didn't have too much time to dwell on the whole thing—that burning piece of support beam had torn into the controls. Fire and electricity didn't mix, and the whole thing was overloaded to begin with.

The charge was enormous and he could feel it in the air. An arm over his head, he dashed through the flaming remainder of the display and down through the hole made by the collapsing boat trough. Of course, if that thing blew… an arm over his head wouldn't save him. In fact, the whole area would be a very, VERY large hole in the ground.

Someone pulled him away from the burning building as he tried to get his breath. He needed to go to the zoo house. Of course, he also needed oxygen and probably a new coat. Maybe a few stitches to the head too…

Pushing away "helping" hands, he stared across the lake at the lonely cement building on the back of the property. From the amount of buzzing and the globby blue energy now dropping from the power cable, they had probably twenty seconds before it happened. He was fast, but he wasn't that fast.

XYZ

It was the most excellent thing she'd seen in the last month. By extension it was also the most frightening. There were two ugly steam generators, like the kind she'd seen in museums. They'd been fitted with stuff like she'd seen in the crates and it looked monstrous, like something from Frankenstein's lab.

The steam engines lurched and chugged, generating enough power for the long-barreled guns attached, which were aimed at the key hole on the ship. If it was possible for the ship to look annoyed, she certainly did now; her blue light was blinking in some agitated one-off pattern as glowing whips of energy prevented the ugly, smoky sonic blasts from getting through.

There was a third device, small, square and not of earthly origin in front of the door, collecting the wispy runoff from the TARDIS shields.

Spending a moment taking it all in, Violet didn't know where to start.

Finally she began inspecting the engines, trying to find a boiler. Oddly enough—she couldn't find one. They must have been internally retrofitted too, Violet noted dully, moving on to the next order of business. It was fine; she didn't know what she'd do with the broiler once she found it anyway. She only remembered how they worked from the Doctor's tedious oration while they were in line this morning on potential of steam power, and how the dirty fuel necessary in this time period to get work out of a steam turbine far outweighed any sort of environmental impact they could have potentially had. She hadn't been even half-listening, so she was surprised to recall that much.

Which left her with, what? A sonic screwdriver, and the box, the guns…

She could try to disrupt the box, she supposed. It'd probably work out alright, as long as she could do it from a safe enough distance.

Moving between the generators, Violet cautiously approached the box, attempting to judge a safe distance. Trying a few settings on the screwdriver that should have done SOMETHING, and yet did absolutely NOTHING, Violet contemplated her options.

It didn't take long, because she couldn't think of anything.

Another round of "turn knobs and hope for the best" later, and Violet was thoroughly frustrated. "Stupid, STUPID thing." Looking down at the sonic screwdriver, she almost threw it at the box.

A grin pealed back on her face and she began looking around. She was taking a far too technical approach to the problem. In a corner, she found a mallet, which she thought ought to do it.

Of course, the thing came up to her knee, and she couldn't lift it off the ground, so that was out. Beside it, though, was a rather large paper bag of nails. Grabbing it up, she twisted the brown paper at the top, closing the opening as she rushed back to the ship. The horrible buzzing sounds were making her head hurt, like the noise was echoing around in her sinus cavity. Getting this over-with would be quite nice.

Grabbing the twisted top, she began swinging it back and forth, trying to aim. After the fifth or sixth swing, however, she realized it was time to just do it and see what happened.

It flew through the air a whole ten feet, the tail of the bag spinning, and scored a direct hit with the little metal box—disrupting the poorly rigged connection with the power cable running through the park.

The box thunked the ship then came to a halt and the cable flopped around like a dying fish for a moment, unearthly energy discharging into the cement floor. It finally went limp as the last of the life went out of it.

The humming died down and the TARDIS went dark.

The girl breathed a sigh of relief. Until she realized the engines were still churning and the guns were now pointed directly at her.

Violet liked chocolates, ignorance and ponies. So far, today, there'd been no chocolate and no ponies. But she'd still been working on the blissful ignorance regarding what Captain Crazy, Alien Nutter had been on about, when he'd said she and the Doctor 'would burn.' The guns pointed at her made THAT little nugget of happiness burst like an oily detergent bubble. She was standing between them, and there was no place to hide. This made her very unhappy.

XYZ

People were asking him questions, but the Doctor really wasn't listening. Mostly he was surprised that, so far, nothing had exploded. He'd admit, he felt a bit guilty for being surprised. There was also some small bit of pride tucked away in there.

The girl was a quick study. She'd have been even quicker, if she'd give up her unnecessary desires to think like a human, but for someone obsessed with masquerading as an ape, she'd completely and utterly managed to make them not explode.

As the last bits of unspent energy drained off the melted, twisted cable, and the brigade put various fires around the park out (lost cause, he thought), he had to grin. Pushing away the hand of the man trying to look at the gash on the back of his head (you'd think there were brains exposed, or something, the way the man with the red moustache was going on), he began pushing past people seeking explanations.

The crowds had thinned considerably—it seemed that some small bit of the actual danger was now becoming apparent, and the park staff were forcing people to evacuate. Once he dodged the people in the immediate vicinity, he managed to haul his tired body over a few planters and towards the zoo house with a minimum of human obstacles.

It wasn't much of a run, more like a stumbling sort of jog which agitated the punctures on his side and made his legs burn, but the Doctor continued on. Running a hand through his hair, he pulled out bits of carbonized wood and burnt hair. He had no desire to look in a mirror.

Coming off the footbridge, the Doctor stopped, looking for a clear path around several sets of burning bushes. He thought he found one, and was about to take off again, when he had a thorough bell-ringing reminiscent of one Jackie Tyler.

Turning his head, he looked right into the fiery eyes of a woman who would tear him apart, if given the chance. "Where is my daughter? Where is Ellen?"

The Doctor's hand went to his burning cheek. 'I don't know' was definitely not a good answer. 'With Violet' seemed pretty decent.

He, who always had a quick retort didn't answer fast enough, however. The woman pointed a finger up at him. "I don't know what you're about," she hissed, looking past him to the boat ride. "But I saw you come out of there. It's bad enough you leave that poor, sweet girl to her own devices, then you drag my daughter into it?"

Eyes wide, the Doctor searched helplessly for an explanation for himself. Why did he seem to get himself into these things? "She was with Violet. They got out of the boat house ahead of me. They should be at the--"

'Zoo' never made it out of his lips. The back end of the cement structure exploded with a rumbling clap and a cloud of smoke and pulverized cement filled the air as surprised cries from onlookers filled the remainder of the thick air around them.

Not bothering to comfort the woman or try to explain, the Doctor grabbed her shoulders with his dirty, bleeding hands and moved her aside, starting in on a dead heat run towards the trouble, mind burning with the though of how he'd just never absolutely ever forgive himself.

XYZ

Violet was completely out of good ideas. That whole 'move the metal box' thing was her one shining bit of inspiration. The guns must have been set on some kind of gear system, because she could hear them cranking as they focused their aim.

Clenching her eyes shut, she hoped for the best.

The metal door she'd entered through swung open with a hollow yawn reminiscent of when the TARDIS was in one of her moods. Violet's eyes snapped opened, and she saw Ellen standing there. "Get out," she ordered as the guns cranked 'round.

It only took them a second, however, to determine that the other child was not their primary target, and they returned to their original position, and fired.

There was smoke, there was a steamy hiss, but that was it. Violet lay flat on the ground, arms over her head, waiting for debris, or an explosion that never came.

Surprised at her alive-ness, she slowly looked up at Ellen. "Thanks," she breathed. It had been a lucky distraction, but a distraction none-the-less. There'd been no higher maths involved in this operation so far, so a little luck was a welcome thing.

That was, of course, until she heard the beeping. After three consecutive beeps, Violet began looking for the source.

"What is it?" Ellen asked, but then changed attitudes. "Never mind lets just go."

Seeing the timers on the bottoms of both engines, Violet knew they wouldn't outrun it. Grabbing the key around her neck, she scrambled to her feet. "This way!" she ordered, fumbling with the police box lock.

The Doctor said it had kept out the assembled hordes of Ganges Khan. Let's see how it'd do with a presumably sizable explosion.

XYZ

The explosion had rattled the air around the TARDIS but not the ship itself. Crouched just inside the door, Violet hugged Ellen's head, the way the Doctor always tried to shield her. They could hear debris falling outside, cement walls collapsing and animals howling their discontent. Then there was nothing.

The air movement inside the ship was a familiar sound. So were her cranky metal moans. Violet listened to that for a while, waiting until the blood wasn't throbbing in her head and they were both breathing semi-normally.

Finally Violet let go of her friend, and their eyes met. Ellen seemed surprised that they were still alive. Which was reasonable, Violet thought. It had sounded quite like the world was coming to an end.

Licking her lips, the younger girl smiled. "Thanks," she said again. "For coming back. I'd have been barbeque."

Ellen looked around her for the first time, eyes wide. Gasping, she tried to take in everything.

Sliding the lace with the key back around her neck, Violet beamed. "This is home." Her grandfather's place had been far too… she didn't know. Austere. Always something that no one ever touched, and rooms no one ever used. 'Home' had only ever been her tiny corner of it. And the kitchen. Everyone always gathered in the kitchen, and that was safe, informal place to be. But the TARDIS… it was bigger, still every last inch of it was home.

"You weren't kidding," the older girl breathed, arms wrapped around herself. Discretely, she pinched her own arm. The space was vast. The middle column had so many controls. Everything looked so…used and lived-in. If a place such as this could be home, then it looked like one, she supposed.

Trying to push her hair out of the way, Violet settled for tucking it behind her ears, before running up to the mushroom-shaped column. "Yeah. She's awesomely brilliant." Violet had to stop herself, just then. She wanted to grab her friend's hand and drag her through the ship. Slowly, and with some regret, she clomped along the metal grates back to the door, where Ellen seemed rooted. "I guess we should get you back to your mum. You shouldn't make her worry."

The other girl's blue eyes continued to travel over the enormous space. She was also avoiding Violet's stare. "I met her at the carousel, but I told her I wasn't leaving without you."

"I…thank you." Don't make excuses, her gram would say. If someone says something nice, just shut your mouth and say thank you. "Can I tell you something?" Violet asked, as she went to the door.

"Huh?"

Pushing, she couldn't get it to budge. "You're my first real friend…well, that isn't a grownup, or the Doctor." She had NO idea what he was. Was there a point when you became so old that you weren't a grownup, but something else entirely?

Ellen smiled. It wasn't a warm smile… it stopped at her lips and there was a touch of pity around the eyes.

Violet chose to ignore it, and kicked the door. "Aww…" she moaned, turning to the center column. "You're not keeping it shut for a dumb reason, again, are you?" Unlatching the door a second time, she put some shoulder into it, but nothing happened. "No, really. We have to get Ellen back to her family. You don't want her mum to be mad, do you? PLEASE open the front door?"

The ship gave a hollow moan, as if to say it wasn't her fault.

Ellen looked her questioningly, but didn't get a response or interpretation.

With a small huff, Violet sat on the ramp, a few feet from the door, her dirty, slightly singed skirts gathering around her unceremoniously like rags. "I think, at least for now, we're stuck here."

TO BE CONCLUDED…


	12. Chapter 12

Standard disclaimers. Thanks to Erica, Krypto and Emma for beta help for the last 12 chapters. TOTALLY didn't mean for this to get epic.

Thanks for sticking around this long. Got some plans for the future involving Captain Jack and, because I am not above giving in to peer pressure… an eventual happy ending for two of our characters. I shant say who. Use your imagination.

XYZ

Trolley Park Murders

Chapter 12

XYZ

After a few moments, Ellen joined Violet on the ramp. The older girl picked away bits of dirt from her boot, thinking. "How old are you, anyway?"

Violet frowned, not sure why anyone would ask. "Seven years and three months and ten days. Why?"

Ellen frowned, still not venturing toward eye contact. "You…seem older. So does the Doctor. Where are you from? Are you human?"

That hung in the air for a moment. Pushing her dark blonde frazzled hair away from her face, Violet shrugged. "He's like ninety-billion or something. Which is far too old, I think. I'm from earth." She almost said 'just not this earth,' but other dimensions and such were SO beyond the scope of this conversation. "He's from… I don't know. Some place else. We never really talked about it." Mostly because Violet didn't want to. Of course, it wasn't like he just gave information away about himself anyway.

She messed with her skirts, rubbing off smudges, but was only succeeding in grinding the soot into the fabric. Still, it was something for her hands to do, and something for her to look at, since she and Ellen were playing that game. "He says he's a 'Time Lord' or something equally stuffy and silly. I'm supposed to be one too, but I think I'm human, and he's playing a big joke on me." Her shoulders rose and fell again. "I don't know why anyone'd want to be anything other than plain old human anyway."

Though she could think of a few reasons, Ellen didn't say anything. Humanity seemed very important to the girl beside her, so she didn't question it. She wanted to ask about the ship, but she refrained. "What about your mother?"

Violet looked up at the domed ceiling and smiled, thinking of her mother. "Prettiest, funniest and best lady in the universe." As far as Violet was concerned, the sun rose and set beneath her mother's feet. Always had, always would. "She just…knew me. I never had to explain myself. I was never acting too strange for her. And everything I did made her happy. Well, unless it made her cross." She let out a spontaneous, awkward laugh. "She always knew, though. There wasn't any hiding or pretending or making excuses. She'd tell me I'd done wrong, and life would go on." Her mum was never afraid to tell her she was full of it.

"That's how mothers are," Ellen said wisely.

Suddenly Violet realized just how very difficult it had been, fitting in at school, and how ill-adjusted she was to the types of interpersonal game-playing that went on there. She never knew if what her teachers said was what they meant, and she always felt like they were judging her when they used that sugary sweet tone of voice. "I wish she could have come with me. I know she misses him." She pointed to the door. "What about you? How come you're not pitching a fit about all this?"

Ellen's eyes finally met hers, the smallest smile forming on her lips. "That is just assuming I choose to believe any of this."

"Point. I wouldn't believe me either."

XYZ

The Doctor frantically dug through the rubble, ignoring the pain in his head and sides (and everywhere else, for that matter). He stepped over what was too heavy to move and tossed aside the rest, stumbling around in a dark that was only broken by flicker fires burning outside, muttering the same thing over and over. "Please be as clever as I think you are…don't be human…don't be human…"

Elephants were trumpeting and large cats howling in some other part of the building and he could actually hear the sound of the fire, so he knew things weren't looking good for the park. "Don't be human…"

He was hip-deep in cement that he continually had to climb over and around. The roof had been wood, and so that in itself he could actually move. The metal was still hot and so he avoided dealing with it at all costs.

"Where are they!" the angry woman's voice rang out through the gutted cavernous space. It wasn't just anger at him that he heard there, but the type of fear that only a parent can feel for her child. The Doctor could sympathize…later.

Climbing over two more up-ended slabs, the Doctor made it to the half-covered blue box. Pulling away a large sheet of wood, he found part of the door and began pounding on the opaque glass furiously. "PLEASE be as clever as I think you are…"

Stopping, he listened. A few seconds later he was rewarded with a tiny pound back. He pounded one more time. "Who's in there?" he called out loudly.

It came as a tiny, muffled reply, stifled by the door of the ship and the debris. "Violet and Ellen, Doctor! The door is stuck!"

Without thinking, he kissed the glass. "You brilliant, clever children. And you wonderful, beautiful ship!" Remembering the angry lady who wanted his head, he turned back. "They're in here! They're both in here!"

Tossing pieces of wood away from the door, he could see the keyhole just above several slightly glowing pieces of metal. "Just a mo," he called to the girls. "Almost there…" Finding a mostly undamaged beam, he used the end of it to push the scraps around until he'd cleared enough room for the external censors to stop detecting immediate heat and shrapnel dangers and allow him to open one of the doors.

XYZ

When the door finally opened towards them, Violet shot out, practically tackling the Doctor. She grabbed him about the neck and held on for dear life, until he told her to mind the skull. And the ribs. And the everything else. She settled for grabbing hold of his arm with both hands and not letting go.

Ellen came out next, and the Doctor quickly yanked the door closed before anyone could see inside.

The girl's mother called out from the other side of the debris, about twenty feet away. She began trying to work her way around the easiest of it to maneuver, but her clothing was hardly conducive to the circumstance. "Ellen!"

The child almost got ahead of herself and the Doctor had to pull her away from falling over an uneven piece of cement. It was slow going with two other people in tow, but he got them over the rubble.

The smell of smoke was growing thicker through the park, and the sound of howling animals was growing further away. They all really did need to get out soon. Managing to make it over the last large slab, the Doctor let go of Ellen's hand as her mother grabbed her.

Behind them, he could see two more people approaching. The Doctor nodded. "The rest of your family's here." He looked down at Ellen and spoke only to her. "The main entrance should be clear. You can get out there."

The girl's mother was so thrilled to have her child back that she momentarily forgot her distain for the Doctor, Violet noted. The woman was asking where the two of them would be going, if not out the front. The Doctor made their excuses.

Violet grabbed Ellen's hand. "Thank you. I really mean it. Maybe… maybe I'll see you around?"

A sad frown spread across the child's face. "Maybe…not." She looked past Violet, to the blue box. "I liked it when we were on the rides. But the rest of this… If it's always like this… I don't think I want to ever see you again." As some sort of sad consolation prize, she hugged Violet. "I'm still your friend, though."

Violet let the Doctor pull her away, back towards the box. She didn't turn around, though, until Ellen and her family were out of sight.

XYZ

The Doctor let out a howling screech. "I think you're supposed to put that on something! Not just dump it straight on!"

Violet stopped pouring the peroxide on the head wound. "It works better this way. Look, I got all the dirt out!"

"Nurse Ratchet!"

Still standing on a kitchen chair, Violet put the bottle down on the table. "I've gotten lots of scrapes," she said authoritatively, and then went back to digging around in his hair. "I think that's skull." The declaration was very detached and scientific. "It's a wonder you didn't bleed to death. So how am I supposed to close this up?"

Sighing, the Doctor prodded the wounds beneath his ripped up shirt. "Don't worry about that now, if it's stopped. I think I still have some wood in here."

Hopping off of the chair, Violet pulled the shirt away from the dried blood. "I think you have a whole FOREST in there." Gently pulling the worst of it out, she grabbed the peroxide bottle again. They'd have to bust open another package soon. "So… what happened? The marshal didn't get away, did he?"

The Doctor winced as she flushed the wounds. "Everything's taken care of." Not wanting to go further, he let out another dramatic moan.

"Baby."

"Torturer." The Doctor looked her over as she played nurse. She didn't appear too much worse for the wear. Some scrapes on her hands, dirtier than a chimney sweep, but still mostly whole. The frown twisting up her brow was not from physical malady. "Am I still a git?" Only thing he could think of. They'd saved the day—heck—even the cute, furry but slightly deadly animals made it out alright. It had to be him.

Violet shrugged. "I dunno."

Sighing, he shook his head, but even that caused his side to hurt. "You were right, ok? I'd only stopped to give Plazus a hard time, once I found his advertisement beacon. That wasn't right of me, no matter what he'd done, or I'd thought he'd done."

Shaking her head, Violet inspected the gashes. They looked pretty clear. "Ellen said something."

When she didn't go further with the statement, the Doctor tried to nudge her. "I thought you two worked pretty well together. You picked a good one."

The girl's lips were pressed tightly together, her face twisted in concentration. "She said we were still friends, but she never wanted to see me ever again."

The Doctor wished that he had some wise words, something learned from nearly a millennia of traveling through time and space and interfering with people's lives. But he didn't. Because he'd been told that a time or two himself, and he knew just how badly it stung. He couldn't imagine how it must feel to someone her age, when every emotion was so immediate and overwhelming.

So he did the sensible thing and put an arm around her, trying not to visibly make his discomfort clear. "Some people don't know what to make of all this. And so…they give what they can. Friendship from afar is way better than a knock to the head, you know." He rested his chin upon her hair. "It doesn't make them any worse than anyone else. We have our place, and they have theirs. We try to keep things in some semblance of order, and they live out their lives."

The thought of Rose, living her life in some other dimension without him suddenly pervaded his mind. There were times when it hurt less; now was not one of those times. "When you find someone that understands this, and understands you… don't ever take them for granted."

The girl nodded. "I thought… I don't know. We got along and everything." Which was far more than she'd ever accomplished with anyone else her own age.

He squeezed her close to him, open wounds be damned. "They might be in your life for a minute, or for a lifetime. We get what the Universe gives us. And we go on from there."

XYZ

It had taken a hot shower, two cups of tea and two Bunny stories before she'd fallen asleep. She'd been tired since he'd sent the TARDIS on her way, hopefully to some place a bit less…physically taxing.

Still sitting on the bed with an arm around her, the Doctor simply watched the rise and fall of that tiny chest.

His own cup of tea was still sitting on the nightstand. He reached over for it and winced. The wound was healing; now that it was cleared out of debris and other bits of loveliness, it'd take care of itself, but moving was going to be uncomfortable for a while.

Finishing the cold bit in the bottom, he held onto the cup for a moment, just looking at it. It took some resolve, but he slid the arm out from under her, dragging himself quietly to his feet. Pulling the blanket up to her chin, he turned on the night-light and killed the lamp.

Walking over to the shelves on the other side of the bed, he put the unused ride tickets next to some of her other souvenirs, looking over the collection. He'd need to put up more shelves if this kept up.

She sighed, her head rubbing against the pillow as she snuggled in further for the night. The Doctor stopped and watched her for a moment. She had her mother's soft lips and long eyelashes. The lips were parted just a bit and her eyelashes were resting against her full cheeks. He'd been joking when he'd said she was cuter when she was sleeping, but there'd been some truth to it. There was an angelic peace there; no worries about who she was, where she was from, or who she was to become. There were only the types of dreams little girls should have. He hoped they were filled with magic and ponies and any other wonderful things she could think of. She deserved that much.

Stopping in the doorway, he almost couldn't bring himself to leave. The Doctor didn't know how long she'd be in his life. More than a moment, he should think; she'd managed that already. But he knew it wouldn't be a lifetime, neither a human nor Time Lord lifetime.

Closing the door behind him, he wandered back to the control room, staring at the tea-stained cup. He wouldn't have her forever. He only hoped he could prepare her for that day, and wondered what he'd do with himself when she left.

THE END.

A/N: The park wasn't open for that long, but it really did burn to the ground in real life, but I think it happened in the middle of winter. There's a bar there, now and a beer distributor. It's kind of sad, really.

They were called trolley parks because they were usually at the end of a trolley line or at a junction, and run by the trolley companies. The idea was that people would ride the trolley, if there was a destination. Worked fairly well till there was market saturation with the parks and the trolley lines began to dry up. And that's your history lesson for today.

Yup…another useless fact that won't save you from a zombie attack, so I'll give you a piece of advice: aim for the head.


End file.
